Last Seen Online is unlike the last few books written by Wren James (which I loved) but is equally enjoyable. Delilah is a wannabe actress who is pulled into Hollywood royalty following a mortifying audition. Her new friend, Sawyer, involves her in an old murder case and they investigate this further, helped by some cool internet investigation and a defunct blog. This puts them in danger, but they do solve the case. I was dimly aware of the world of fandom, so it was fascinating to delve deeper. Whilst Delilah’s sleuthing skills were perhaps a little too impressive, this is an exciting and entertaining book, with plenty of twists. It will certainly appeal to all the true crime aficionados out there.

Last Seen Online (Gottie Writes, #1) by Lauren James follows Delilah, who is going through a lot with a divorce between her parents, difficulties with her friendships and embarrassing moments during an audition with a celebrity's son, Sawyer Saffitz. This doesn't stop Delilah and Sawyer from becoming friends and starting to use the internet to solve a celebrity mystery involving murder, lies, money laundering and an exciting blog from Gottie. Delilah and Sawyer's lives are in danger as they enter this territory while navigating and understanding their romantic feelings for each other. Will they ever discover the truth? Read to find out...

Wow! This was an amazing book to read, and I thoroughly enjoyed reading the entirety of it. I especially loved all the twists and turns featured throughout, and although I could guess that some of these twists and turns would happen, this wasn't true for every occurrence, and they were no less shocking. The book is incredibly well written and makes the reader want to continuously read on. I also loved the different formats used throughout, including text messages and blog posts, which make up the prequel to this current book. I have always loved books that combine multiple genres, and this book is no exception with the murder mystery thriller elements combined with the romance between Sawyer and Delilah. However, it would have been nice to see this further developed. It was also interesting to see that there is evidence that Delilah may be neurodiverse, which only the eagle-eyed reader with attention to detail would probably notice, but I think it is a very good addition, even if it may have been unintentional. The cliffhangers were also amazing, with some of the scenes making me fear for the safety of the characters! Safe to say, this was somewhat an emotional rollercoaster of a book.

There is nothing I can really say that I disliked about this book. Some of the chapters were very long, but although they could have been reduced into smaller chapters, this would not be necessary unless the author wanted to increase the book's pace, which would have worked very well with some of the scenes. It would, as already mentioned, have also been nice to see Sawyer and Delilah's relationship develop further and even discover more about the secrets of Gottie and who see actually is; however, from the Goodreads title of this book, I am extremely hopeful that this book may be the first in a series and hopefully these lines of the plot will be further developed in further books. If there are more books coming, I truly cannot wait to read them! This just seemed like such a different book which was very relevant to the increasingly digital world in which we are living.

Altogether, I rate this book 4 stars, making it a very good book as it was incredibly gripping with some amazing use of language and cliffhangers, which just made the reader want to continue reading. I also loved the many different formats used to deliver the story which really adds much value to this great book. I would definitely recommend this book, I am sure it will have you hooked! I must extend my deepest appreciation to NetGalley and Walker Books for providing me with an Advanced Reader Copy (ARC) of this book in return for an honest book review.

Last Seen Online is the kind of book that you’ll want to make time for. Hard to put down, and a fascinating premise. It felt like something of a departure for Lauren James, but thanks to NetGalley for giving me the opportunity to read and review this.
Our main character Delilah wants to be an actress but she is mortified when a school audition ends badly and the pictures taken and posted online go viral. The embarrassment is bad enough, but the person auditioning opposite her was Sawyer, the son of a celebrated actress.
The two become friendly, and in conversation happen to become entangled in an old murder case involving someone close to Sawyer’s family. Showing skills way beyond those I’d expect from a teen, Delilah uncovers some damning evidence and quickly finds out someone has a vested interest in stopping her from finding out more.
From start to finish this was exaggerated but such great fun to read. The use of mixed media offered a different experience, and the closing stages threw up more than one or two unexpected twists. This definitely has me curious to read more.

A fun, fast-paced thriller for fans of Karen McManus and Holly Jackson. Loved the multi-media format, as well as the deep dive into the world of obsessive online fandom (which gives it a nice crossover appeal to any millenials who - like me! - spent way too much time on tumblr).

Lauren James spins true crime, meets fandom, meets thriller, and first love with expert precision. Building on the brilliant and unhinged online story "An Unauthorised Fan Treatise", all of Delilah's acting dreams seem to be coming true as she befriends Sawyer and meets his famous actress mother. She is also undeniably crushing hard on Sawyer. As she is thrown into the glittering world of showbiz she encounters a decade old mystery thick with greed, internet stalking, betrayal and murder she has to get to the bottom of before it kills her.

This was so gripping, the reveals, the twists! I was hooked. I burned through it poolside, literally I got sunburn because I couldn't put it down and I LOVE the ADHD rep that is Delilah - I too had one friend I was hyper fixated on I had a Hannah friend who dumped me for being "too much". Now if only I could find a Sawyer...
Seriously though Wren James ALWAYS delivers. Get this in your hands already.

Thanks to Walker and Netgalley for the eARC. It has not affected my opinions.

It was very captivating and fast-paced, so it was difficult to put it down!

There are still part that displeased me, such as how stupid the MCs were to go heads down toward danger (but I know, there wouldn't have been a book if they weren't stupid), and how the guilty one suddenly when into a full length explanation on why there were guilty without even being really cornered, and how quick the ending went after that...

But otherwise, it was very entertaining. I really liked the mixed media, it gives more to the story via another character's research, so it was good. There were some easiness taken and that would put me out of the book in a "yeah right Delilah can do that" with an eyeroll, but it was a rare occurency so it was ok.

I really liked Delilah and Sawyer's characters and chemistry, as well as how things turned out for both their own relationship and the whole story surrounding them ; both were good together, and it feels good to have the romance as a subplot, with the whole investigation being a real focus !

Overall, it was very good.
And it also reminds me how toxic teenagers are now with social medias and I'm so happy I'm far over from my teenage self and that destructive behavior.

The twisty intense format of this book was so fun! I loved the blog entries spread out throughout, gradually setting the scene and also demonstrating well the insanity of the internet. An enjoyable read!

I’m a fan of Wren James, this is their third book that I’ve read and I really like how they explore complex and relevant issues in an accessible and entertaining way.

Last seen online explores the loss of privacy and boundaries, the intrusiveness of the media and social media, and the sometimes challenging world of fan fiction. This is a story told through multimedia. We have a core narrative that follows Delilah, a girl who wants to become an actress, and we have a blog that is dedicated to the two actors in a T.V. Series and the people who write fan fictions around them.

This blog is often quite worrying, the person running it breaches the privacy of the actors in a bid to prove that they are together even though they’re both presenting as hetero in public. There’s some difficult content explored such as the media/ production companies forcing actors to deny their sexuality and relationships, fans breaching the privacy of actors and treating them as though they belong to the public, and people trying to ‘out’ others regardless of what the individuals want. The extremes that one fan in particular goes to are deeply disturbing leading to painful consequences.

The main character Delilah is accused of being too obsessive and possessive and ‘too much’ by her friends. Although she isn’t involved in this fan fiction world, she does make questionable and intrusive choices in her desire to investigate the historical murder of one of the actors in the T.V. Series Loch and Ness that the fan fiction relates to. She meets the godson of one of the actors in an audition that doesn’t go so well. They strike up a fast friendship and Delilah starts to get involved in investigating his godfather’s incarceration for the murder. This is a really wholesome and nice relationship and was enjoyable to read as they are both a little lonely and find they have a lot in common. I did find I had to suspend my disbelief a bit though with things like Sawyer (who is in high school) driving a Lamborghini (even if his mum is a favourite actress.

This is ultimately a mystery that explores pertinent issues in todays society in a Hollywood setting. Another win from Wren James.

Gripping from the get-go, Last Seen Online revives the mystery of An Unauthorized Fan Treatise with a star-spangled scandal.

WOW. This was incredible. For any fans of the author’s other work, and any fans of other series such as A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder by Holly Jackson, this is for you. The twists and turns of a typical crime investigation were complemented beautifully with the online articles and ‘blog posts’ throughout the novel, which I thought were really cool and are a feature I like in the author’s other work, as they provide extra depth to the story. I don’t often read mysteries but this one was fantastic and I knew going into it that I was going to love it as much as some of the other books. The plot twists were AMAZING and I can’t recommend this enough! Definitely check this one out if you’re into a fun but thrilling mystery with a hint of fandom throughout, and an ending which will blow your mind!

This is quite different from what I was expecting. It is about a young aspiring actress trying to solve an old murder mystery. The inclusion of a lot of text and blog posts somehow makes the story seem more real and relatable to its target readers. It is an easy and fun read.

I really enjoyed this. I've not read anything by Lauren James before but I know I will definitely be taking a look at some of her other work.
The story follows Delilah as she meets Sawyer at school and they fall down a bit of a rabbit hole when his actor godfather's crimes come back to light. Did he kill his co-star Nathan? And what does Sawyer's actress mother have to do with this?
I loved the inclusion of Gottie's blog posts and the way the blog post, emails, and text conversations were designed within the book. This really engaged me and kept me fully invested in everything that was going on.
Delilah's character was perfectly written, she had her own personal dilemmas as well as the external plot going on around her. Sawyer had his own personality outside of his actress mother that really cemented their great dynamic for me. I did think that they became close rather quickly, but the development from friends to more was paced really well for me.
I would have liked to see more of the play they were auditioning for, but that's personal preference.

And that plot twist about Gottie at the end. Wow.

Loved it!

I thoroughly enjoyed 'Last Seen Online', particularly as it touched on elements of online life I remember from my younger days (ah, nostalgia!). The main plot is set present day, and follows Delilah - a curious and resourceful teenager - as she simultaneously tackles the trials of being a teenager in the modern online world (embarrassing viral videos etc.), and tries to solve a decade-old murder of a TV star, that the police may have got wrong. All of this coincides with her new friendship with Sawyer - handsome, son of a celebrity, and seemingly interested in Delilah.
The murder mystery is revealed through Delilah and Sawyer's detective work, as they dig into old news articles and also a crazy online 'Fan Treatise' posted by an obsessive fangirl around the time of the murder.
Lauren James has very cleverly taken a show she created for an earlier novel, and developed an entire fandom for it, writing the full 'fan treatise' speculating on the relationship between two actors, and bringing the receipts (lots of LiveJournal nostalgia!). It really taps into both the obsessive nature of online fandom (the positives and negatives), and the realities of modern online life for young people.
This is definitely one I can see a LOT of our YA readers enjoying - it has murder, mystery, romance, LGBTQ+ representation, gossip, fanfiction references, scandal and thrills galore! The only thing I felt I was missing out on was being able to watch the (fictional) show - I would DEFINITELY be a Loch & Ness fan!!

4.5 stars

*eARC received from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review*

i followed An Unauthorised Fan Treatise when it was first released weekly, so i was So Excited to get to read Last Seen Online and it did not disappoint! it was incredibly compelling but also had lots below the surface that i'm looking forward to discovering in future rereads. delilah was a really great protagonist - despite her sometimes questionable actions she was really sympathetic, complex, and realistic, which is fantastic for a teen girl, as lots of fictional teen girls and fangirls are represented very unkindly in media. wren james is clearly someone who loves and is deeply familiar with fandom, which made this a fantastic read.

4 stars - contemporary YA murder mystery.

Delilah, an aspiring actress and true crime enthusiast teams up with Sawyer, to try and figure out what happened to an actor his mom used be in a popular tv show with, and who’s godfather is in prison for murdering.

I enjoyed the sun drenched setting of LA and delving into Sawyers rich and famous family. I found the mixed media aspect kept the story flowing quickly, though I did find myself skimming some of the comments left after the gottie writes excerpts.

I thought the character of Delilah was well written and suspected she had some form of high functioning anxiety but I thought she was really sweet and caring with Nida. I thought the romance was super cute between her and Sawyer.

The murder mystery had lots of twists and turns that I didn’t expect and I didn’t suspect the murderer until revealed, nor the person behind gottie.

Quick paced and hard to put down - would recommend for younger YA onwards and for fans of Karen McManus and Holly Jackson.

Lauren James always delivers when it comes to unique and totally engaging stories. In Last Seen Online, a budding actress stumbles across a decade old crime and can't help but investigate, even though the world feels the crime has already been solved. I was gripped from the first page, and although Delilah was in parts unbearably annoying, it's worth pushing through just for the sheer joy of experiencing the rest of the book!

I received a copy from the publisher in exchange for an honest review

I absolutely loved this book! The writing is accessible and easy to follow along but mostly it was the storyline that really intrigued me. It had an element of mystery and really probes into fandoms and how we consume true-crime. It definitely makes you think about yourself as a consumer and re-evaluate how you view celebrities and where the line is drawn.

I would recommend this book to anyone who is in a reading slump/loves celebrities, fandoms and true-crime.

This is a fast-paced story following on from the viral hit by Lauren James titled "An Unauthorized Fan Treatise". I have not read the former, so was able to approach the book with a relatively open mind.

It was a mixed bag for me, with a somewhat uneven pacing wrt the storytelling narrative. The final reveal works well, but it would perhaps have been useful to have more of the developments unfolding along the way rather than everything coming together a little too quickly at the very end.

Nevertheless, Delilah is an engaging character and while her relationship with Sawyer felt a little too easy in comparison to relationships IRL, they made a good team.

The story exposed much of the toxic celebrity culture that prevailed both then and now, and the nature of obsessive fandom. All in all, an entertaining read which is likely to appeal to James's existing fans and add to their number.

"Same old, same old. Breakdown in public, best friend hates me, being stalked by a murderer."

Thank you to NetGalley for providing a copy of this for my first-ever ARC! I was unbelievably excited for this, as the prequel to this book, An Unauthorized Fan Treatise, was one of my favourite reads last year. However, as I will now do so in this honest review, I'm sorry to say that I did not like this.

We follow Delilah, a teenage girl who meets and befriends Sawyer, son of a famous actress, after their audition for a school play goes terribly wrong (and viral). Delilah finds out that Sawyer's mom used to be a lead in a paranormal TV show which abruptly ended after one of her co-stars was convicted of murdering their other co-star. But what truly intrigues the true crime-loving Delilah is the involvement of mysteriously vanished fan blogger Gottie, who uncovered a huge conspiracy about the co-stars with her sleuthing before going into hiding. As Delilah and Sawyer comb Gottie's unhinged essay to discover the truth of what really happened during this scandal, they're stalked by someone who very much wants this to all be ancient history.

Right off the bat: the best thing about this is the gottiewrites blog, which captures the insanity of an online fandom so well that it almost washes out everything and everyone else. The prose felt pandering and doesn't trust the reader to make connections themselves. For example, this passage from when Delilah first acquaints herself with the scandal and after she reads an old transcript from the show:

[Wow. It was wild to think that the actor playing Jayden would end up murdering Fang. If she'd had to guess, she'd have thought it would be the other way around. Fang was so big and threatening, compared to Jayden's silly flamboyancy. It reminded her a bit of that TV show Teen Wolf.]

There's nothing wrong with the first two sentences, given what we know about the physicalities of Jayden and Fang. I just wonder why the story doesn't trust us to make that connection along with Delilah by addition of how shocking it is that the big werewolf man got smote by the svelte selkie; classic telling instead of showing. Since I have never watched Teen Wolf, I'm unsure what to make of that reference. Maybe it's simply meant to establish more of Delilah's character, yet I can't help the nagging feeling that it ultimately cheapens the moment. And YET maybe it also means that Delilah herself hasn't grasped how serious this is. Still, iterations of the same cheapening tactic keep happening throughout the book, and that personally raises my brows:

[Her gut clenched. Summoning the self-confidence of that girl on TikTok who had decorated her entire bathroom with vintage computer keyboards, Delilah walked into school.] You can do better than TikTok! I promise!

Next, the mystery and how well it connected to An Unauthorized Fan Treatise. For such a fast-paced story, I felt that very little was actually achieved in solving the mystery until the climax, which happens at a whopping 85% of the book. The reveal felt probable, but also way too easy. It didn't feel satisfying, the way information was streaming out all at once. I realise that saying "no one actually talks like this" about characters' dialogue is a double-edged sword, but if I'd thought before that the characters constantly spoke as if they were always acting/performing even if they weren't, it's never been stronger than in the reveal of the mystery here, and I just think it a shame because the *content* of the reveal works. We finally get to see the bigger picture in which the scandal fits, and it blows me out of the water. But the way it was written doesn't utilise its full potential because it happens way too fast.

Moreso: the subplots. They were all promising, but I wish that they had been fleshed out more. Maybe Nida could have been a bigger player in the story, even serving as a potential foil to Sawyer. As for him, I liked that he was so amiable and comfortable around Delilah, but their relationship was TOO EASY! They never came to croppers on anything or faced any obstacles that actually threatened their relationship, which basically got gifted to them. The constant attention on them barely felt like a true hindrance, much less the high-stakes investigation and danger they take on. And maybe Delilah's feelings about her parents' situation could've been more well touched upon or present in the story.

Finally, we have to talk about my good friend Gottie. There was a plot twist regarding her that made me gasp. Or was there? We suddenly get a lot of info thrown in the last minute about how this twist could make sense, but in the end nothing is confirmed because Delilah ultimately doesn't dig into it. The actual final page is funny though.

All in all, I absolutely loved An Unauthorized Fan Treatise because of its authentic fandom freakiness, and I'm not gonna lie when I say that I'd hoped that even a smidge of that might make itself known here. It did, but strictly only in the gottiewrites portions. The result was that I felt I was reading two entirely different stories, and it made for something that felt ultimately reduced from what it could have been.

Thank you once again to NetGalley for the ARC of this book, and to the author Lauren James.

this was so fun!! i hadn’t heard of this author before but the cover gripped me and i was hooked!! i’m so glad i requested this one and i’m looking forward to what lauren writes next!