Louise O’ Neill is a sensation. She head on tackles current subjects and the grey areas they pose. The ‘what ifs’ the ‘why’s?’ Ever since ‘Asking For It’ I’ve loved Louise but this continues the same but different types of themes like consent and the reliability of people’s memories. I don’t know who I truly believe and I love a book that makes me think. Anyone who wants to be challenged mentally would love this books.

Trigger warnings: sexual abuse

Thank you @netgalley for the eARC of Idol. Idol is out on 12th May 2022.

4*. Idol by Louise O’Neill is a twisty dark thriller. It is compelling, compulsive and claustrophobic. It’s almost impossible to put down.

Sam is a wellness guru and hugely successful online influencer. She’s an author with a Hollywood blockbuster under her belt. However, her fragile empire is shaken to the core when allegations arise about an event which happened when she was a teenager. An event which threatens the image that Sam promotes and the industry which she promotes.

Sam returns to the small town which she grew up in to confront those raising allegations and her past. Hugely uncomfortable, Idol is a smart and tense read.

Thanks to Transworld, Penguin Random House and Netgalley for an ARC.

I haven’t read anything by Louise O’Neill before but was aware of her past books. I believe Idol is a bit of a departure as it’s not so much a thriller than a deep dive into how traumatic past events can’t affect a person and their memory.
Samantha is a highly successful wellness influencer, she has hordes of impressionable young women hanging on her every word as she lays bare the traumatic events of her life and how she has overcome addiction and sexual trauma.
. An anonymous post accusing her of sexual assault when she was young suddenly blows her carefully constructed life to smithereens. She is removed from her company board and other accusations a quick to follow. In desperation she heads home to confront her oldest friend who she believes is behind the post.
Idol is a really good story but Samantha is so unrelenting horrible that it’s really hard to care about her. I don’t think that would matter if the other people involved were better drawn, particularly her friend and ex-boyfriend. If we were able to cheer them on as she is taken down I think it would be a far stronger book. The book is too one sided which I think is a real shame.

Thank you to #netgalley and #randomhouse for allowing me to review this book.

I have read and enjoyed all of Louise O 'Neill's previous books. I love that she writes so authentically across so many genres and I am confident picking up anything that she writes, that it will be an well written and well executed story.

Idol very much affirmed my opinion. Idol is set the US . Samantha is a wildly successful online influencer who has just released her latest bestseller. For her millions of online fans "her girls" , Samantha can do no wrong. They follow her recommendations to "live their truth". Prior to the publication of her latest book, Samantha writes an essay about her sexual awakening, decades before with her teenage best friend, Lisa. The essay goes viral and then Lisa gets in touch to say what actually happened that night was completely different and both women recall the night very very differently.

This was a really timely novel examining the concept of influencers, social media and the fragility of memory. It started really strongly and I was really interested in both the main character and her tenaciousness and online world. As the story unfolds, Samantha goes back to her old hometown to try to confront Lisa and the story flashbacks to their teenage years. My interest waned a little at this point. Samantha was a really well drawn character but I thought Lisa wasn't.

I liked Idol but it isn't my favourite of O'Neill's books. Great concept and really loved the examination of memory but felt the book petered out a little through the second half. Some of this however could of been my high expectations that left me a little disappointed by the second half. Nonetheless, it was well written, interesting and relevant as one would expect from this author.. I look forward to her next book.

3-3.5 stars.

I found this book a bit of a rollercoaster. So many twists and turns throughout and the author delves into a lot of complex situations.

I am completely perplexed by Idol. This is the first novel of Louise O’Neils that I have read, which features many current, serious and complex issues such as eating disorders, addiction, rape and sexual assault, the MeToo movement and the power of online influencers/gurus. I finished the book in a little over 24 hours however did I enjoy it? I’m really not sure.

Despite the world she “influences” Samantha Miller is personified as a shallow, manipulative liar and quite frankly a narcissist. Whilst I’m sure this is how O’Neil intended her “complex” main character to be seen, I feel that despite all of these clear personality traits that Samantha lacked depth. As a result, I didn’t understand her, despise her or emphasise with her in any way. In truth I didn’t feel I engaged with Samantha or any of the characters.

Arguably I guess this was a page-turner in that I wanted to continue reading to see how the story of Samantha, Josh and Lisa ended however I didn’t find it to be a gripping, emotive or thrilling read. Idol had the potential to be a powerful and strong story, raising awareness of multiple important topics, but for me it just fell a bit flat.

I found this book incredibly hard to put down. I was intrigued to know more about Sam and Lisa's past and the secrets they both held. I was eager to see the outcome of this read, and although I had assumptions about the truth, the conclusion proved I was entirely off the mark!

I love it when an author can take my breath away by their writing style. Louise O'Neill has now become a firm favourite author of mine. The intense yet slow reveal was perfect for this storyline, and I am excited to read more by her. Covering various topics (which may be triggering for some readers), these characters' depth runs more profound than most.

If you are a psychological thriller fan, this is a must-read. Pre-order a copy today, don't miss out on this absorbing, compelling summer read!

Biting look at influencers, at self-perception, at our modern world.

Louise O'Neill is a name that when I see on a book, since her debut, I know I'm going to want to read. And yes, Idol lived up to my expectations.

I couldn't help but picture Reese Witherspoon as Sam throughout, her perky persona, stunning and petite frame, strength and ability to transform into a role. Which is Sam really.

Samantha is worshipped by thousands, probably millions of women. Self-empowerment is her message, she brings a Gwyneth Paltrow-like (Goop) mix of products and messages to her followers, her adorers, through every social media platform going. Books, paid-for Facebook groups, events. She's the rock star of the feminist self-help world. She'll spout such deep thoughts as, "I'm a human being having a human experience and I need to honour my truth. And my truth is that I fel triggered and upset."

You might feel the same as I do about the above.

Sam has made a fortune from telling her truth to women everywhere, opening up about sexual assaults, her drug use, eating disorders, how her family treated her through these tough times and how she clawed her way out of the spirals. It's inspired so many, and helped 'her girls'.

Yet her carefully-curated world is as vulnerable as anyone else's to accusations.

From her childhood best friend. Cue manager. Cue crisis management team. Cue a trip to a home town to try and cut off the problem at source, and try and talk sense into the best friend who clearly sees the past differently to Sam. But why?

Ohh this was so good. I love an unreliable narrator. Firstly Sam is (as the quote above shows) a character where you see past the pedestal. You know there are things she isn't telling you. And she is pretty complex, riveting and someone you want to understand. Everything is about her, both inside the story and what you as reader want to know.

You'll read through and draw your own conclusions about the past, about Sam's perceptions of others. And our view of a public figure being torn down, being examined, being tried on social media, is very relevant and something we should all be aware of. The public story is never all of the story.

Satisfying but still quite dark, I just loved the slow-reveal and excellent writing. Sam is a great character, ripe for a filmed version.

With thanks to Netgalley for providing a sample reading copy.

This was such an enjoyable and messy read. Flew through it. Toxic female friendships, online celebrity, #MeToo, the urge to self-mythologise online, influencer culture, cancel culture, obsession. I know this might sound like so much to cram in but O'Neill did it in such a good n easy n compelling way. Some of this was genuinely hard to read, whether due to the content or the actual visceral cringe I felt.

This was my first book by the author and I'll definitely be picking more up.

Big thanks to NetGalley, Random House UK, and the author for the e-ARC.
Available to buy 12/5/22.

CW: SA, eating disorder, emotional abuse

Idol was the first book I read this year, and I've been waiting impatiently for it's release date of 5th May to finally talk about it. It's everything you expect from Louise O'Neill; it's gripping and unflinching, and she returns once again to family themes of assault, abuse, an unreliable narrator and shifting perspectives.

Samantha is an author and social media influencer, with devoted fans who hang on her every word and live their lives how she tells them to, and they think, by her example. However, when an article she writes about an empowering sexual experience with a female friend goes viral, it's for the wrong reason: her old best friend is claiming that this "experience" was not consensual, and Samantha's world is thrown into chaos as she tries to reason with her old friend to get her to take back this claim. This is a fresh direction from O'Neill and this kind of story in that it's 1. from the point of view of the alleged perpetrator 2. who was once a victim of sexual assault herself and 3. it is about woman on woman assault.

O'Neill doesn't just attack influencer culture, she sets her sights primarily on how this is used as an insidious front of faux spirituality, preying on young people, co-opting and discarding different identities for profit. This is especially interesting in how wellness culture was sustained during and tries to rebuild in the wake of the pandemic, during which Sam is all to aware others in her industry got very wrong.

If anything, my only note is that it was doing too much with the ending and there wasn't a need for quite so many twists and turns. The ending surprised me but felt right, but it also needed more room so that it could land with the reader. However, I finished this in the middle of the night because I couldn't put it down, so I'll let you decide for yourself if I'm right on that, or if I sped through it far too fast!

Wow! This was fast paced and intriguing from start to finish, and raised really interesting and complex issues around consent, social media and cancellation culture.

Sam is a self made wellness mogul. After battling addiction and making bad mistakes in her youth, she has turned her life around to help promote other women. She has written books and had movies released, and tours the world helping 'her girls' to become the best she can be. She is at the top of her game, idolised by millions across the globe and an example to many.

However, her world is shook following an email to her manager and it all starts to unwind.

Sam is an unreliable narrator - she has battled addiction and so from the start you are aware that her view of these years may be skewed. But it goes further than this. How accurate are our memories? Are they a construct we raise to protect ourselves from the truth? Can two peoples memories of the same event really be so different, and does that mean someone is lying or do we genuinely remember things differently? Do we lie to ourselves on purpose, or does our mind play tricks on us as a survival instinct? How does the trauma of memories, realised or not, affect how we live our lives?

Many of the issues throughout the book centre on the issue of consent. In the wake of the #metoo movement, Sam is pushing hard for all women to be believed when they make allegations of sexual assault. But what does this mean for her - both as a victim and an alleged perpetrator? Does the #metoo movement go far enough? And how does trial by social media affect the possibility of a fair trial in law?

Sam has built her whole world up around social media - it is crucial to her success. But when the tables are turned, will social media be crucial to her downfall? How safe is a business built up on the idoltry of millions of strangers, and is it possible for a person to keep up that facade? After all, we're all human - what happens to your idol when they show that human side to themselves? Do they remain an idol???

I couldn't put this book down. The twist at the end wasn't so much a twist, as hurtling towards an inevitability that I felt the characters should also have seen coming, but I enjoyed that element of it too as it felt like real life. The book raised more questions to me than it answered - essential for making me question the status quo. Definitely a must read.

This was a great read! It did take a while to get into it but there were plot twists throughout that kept you guessing. I wasn’t sure about the main character of the book, and found myself swinging wildly between loving and hating them! Would read again.

This was an awesome story, with an original (to me) plot. An influencer gets called out in the cancel culture that she has made a living from - Samantha is an empowerment/wellness/self-care guru with an empire built on encouraging women to make a stand, speak their truth, and to value their own worth in the face of abuse and misogyny. All is going well with her new book launch bringing her back into the bestseller list and she releases an essay about a sexual encounter with her best high school friend. The friend gets in touch via email, telling her that the recollection she has of the incident is very different and, most importantly, that it was not consensual. Cue Samantha's world imploding. She goes home to try and rescue her reputation, and that is where the story really comes into its own.
There are so many interesting set-ups throughout the book and Louise O'Neill deftly shows that people that are not one-dimensional, not either simply good or bad. Samantha is not a likeable character, but she is dealing with a lot of heavy trauma that left me feeling sympathy for her and gave context to her actions even as she became more and more grotesque in her plight to keep hold of her image. Nearly all of the characters have done varying degrees of history re-writing, either consciously or not, and this means that all the contributors are unreliable...just like in most real situations of big emotion. Even after finishing it I'm not sure what really happened, or if it even really matters -if people truly believe their memories then that becomes their truth and the actual truth is almost irrelevant to the impact the event has had on them.
This is a really amazing exploration of the human mind and the constructs we build for ourselves to help us understand who we are, or shape who we want to be. It's also an amazing thriller that will keep you gripped. The writing is first class.

Samantha Miller has it all - ambition, fame, money and 'her girls' - adoring fans that hang onto every word she says. Life is good for Sam, and her new book is set to rock the charts until an email from an old friend brings it all crashing down. Sam's childhood best friend is claiming a sexual experience between the two of them, that Sam wrote about in an article, wasn't consensual and now Sam's whole career is teetering on the brink. There's nothing worse than being cancelled, and Sam is determined to not let it happen.

Another fantastic book from Louise O'Neill - this had everything I wanted in a book looking at celebrity and cancel culture that I haven't received in other books and I loved how Sam's character was built up as this wellness influencer (think Brené Brown meets Gwyneth Paltrow's Goop), but then over the chapters all the cracks and ugliness in her perfect exterior started to shine through.

This author is just a master at creating these amazingly complex, flawed human beings and you hate them but relate to them all at the same time for the perfectly imperfect way they swan through life. I think so much can be written about the world of influencers - particularly a type of influencer (rich, white women) who don't really know the meaning of struggle taking advantage of the needs and issues of other women who are so desperate for a calm face to guide them through it all. There were some great moments in this when we see how Sam's following is mostly white young women (but that's not her fault) and she receives criticism from BIPOC influencers in the same sphere for her cultural appropriation when it comes to the type of practices she preaches which seem to be a mixture of different faiths and organisations.

Everything in Sam's hometown was like watching a car crash and Sam just kept digging that hole deeper, and deeper for herself. While she was 40 years old, it was obvious that she had never let go of some things from her childhood (namely not being chosen as 'the one' by the boy she liked). The look at the intoxicating, obsessive way female friendships can be especially at a young age when emotions and hormones are so out of control was done really well. And how we can see Sam exercise her control once more over Lisa when she comes back into town and uses her more domineering personality to wear the other woman (who is mentally & spiritually fragile) down.

There were lots of satisfying moments in this book but the ending was the cherry on the cake, and I feel like I let out a sigh of relief when everything came crashing down once again.

This book is a fantastic take on truth and memory, as well as how one can warp the truth/memory for their own gain. It's also a fantastic gaze at the danger of influencer culture to such an extreme and how it seems to be so easy for young women to fall under the spell of others who might just being using their trauma for their own gain.

I initially wasn’t sure about this book, it took me a little to get into it and it seemed slow but the ending was spot on and I have found myself having enjoyed it. My views of Sam fluctuated throughout the book between feeling sorry for her and finding her extremely unlikable. And the little plot twists throughout renewed my desire to find out what happened at the end. A light read, well written and good plot construction. This is probably a 3.5 and would have been higher if it has captured me a bit quicker.

Thank you for NetGalley for providing me with this book for review.
Oh my, oh my, what a read, a rollercoaster of a plot, I couldn't put it down.

I was intrigued by this book from the moment I saw it and I was not wrong. This book is brilliant. Totally different to what I am used to reading and I could not put it down. It was a book where I was snatching 5 mins here and there to find out what was going on in the story, its a real page turner.
This book highlights the impact of social media today and that things aren't always what they seem to be. This shows how persona's online can be cultivated and people think they know the real person but do you ever really know someone?
This is a book about female relationships and the books goes back in time to when Samantha had a birthday party for Lisa's 18th birthday and the fall out from that night. The book goes from then to present day and shows how this night affects the characters, even now.
Thank you to Louise O'Neill, Netgalley and Random House for the opportunity to read this book as an eArc

Most of us have some input into social media, but there are those who as influencers, have millions of fans and like Samantha Miller, have amassed a fortune.
In the twenty two years since she left her home town, Samantha has completely reinvented herself. She is an international media star. She runs a wellness empire (Shakti) with millions of followers; young women hanging on her every word and following her advice on how to live their best lives. However, a piece she publishes in the run up to a new book launch concerning an experience she had over twenty years ago, has her former best friend e-mailing Sam’s manager, with a very different version.
As the story progresses, back and forth between present day and Samantha’s teenage years, a picture emerges of a spoilt rich wild child who has everything and her not so rich friend who so wants to emulate her. At first I felt sorry for Samantha; misunderstood by her parents and having the love of her life, Josh stolen by her best friend Lisa. She left home and built her own successful business, and now finds herself at Lisa’s mercy. But then, when she returns home intending to see Lisa and get her to retract her statement, a very different character emerges. A manipulator who is going to make sure things work out the way she wants them to, no matter what. It’s clear that Samantha has a much darker side to her character and maybe her truth is a little flawed.
I found the book impossible to put down, wondering how all this would end. It’s a dark, raw thought provoking read, one which as it draws to its conclusion, indicates that revenge (which comes from a totally unexpected source) is indeed a dish best served cold.
My thanks to Netgalley, Louise O’Neill and Random House for an ARC of Idol in exchange for an honest review.

Sam see's herself as a cash cow in the Spirituality industry. As an author of a best selling book millions of women idolise her, which resulted in her having a huge presence on social media and a massive following. There is no doubt that Sam is media candy, successful, famous and walks amongst the A-listers. However her carefully crafted image starts to faulter when a letter arrives from her former best friend Lisa, claiming the essay Sam wrote about an amazing sexual awakening she had with her when they were young, was not how she recalled it, giving rise to whether the act was consensual or not. Being viciously trolled, losing thousands of followers a day and with the fear of being cancelled, Sam desperately reaches out to Lisa to try and prove her innocence and regain control over her life.

The story starts off depicting Sam's wanton lifestyle, however it quickly becomes clear that there are sinister notes to her personally. The book constantly debate's just who is the liar and who is responsible for the attack on Sam's personal empire. I did find that quite a lot of the narrative and actions of the characters were repetitive which made for a slow read. I get that the characters were impacted by mental health issues but many times I wished that the characters would just take decisive action and get on with it instead of the constant back and forth arguing. Overall this book had an interesting plot,

Wow this is a real page turner I could not stop reading, This is about a woman called Samantha Miller who has everything and is a very successful wellness guru and has millions of followers on social media who read her books and go to her motivational speeches. Then she writes a essay about her best friend Lisa and what happened one night when they were teenagers. The only problem is Lisa remembers it differently and states she was sexually assaulted that night.
Compelling and shows the danger of social media and how your memories can play tricks on you.
Highly recommended and thanks to NetGalley and Transworld Publishers Ltd for a advanced copy.