Do You Need to Laugh Now?

Terrific satire + superb mystery

Since the end of last year I’ve been doing a lot of comfort re-reading, turning to books in many genres that I loved and know will delight me. One of them is a hilarious satire of influencers that I reviewed back in the summer; I’m relishing it even more this time around.

Jesse Sutanto's searing satirical mystery is set in LA among the world of TikTok and Instagram influencers who are all desperate to be skinny, beautiful, and have millions of followers no matter what their online "niche" is.

Successful influencer and gifted schmoozer Meredith is a “momfluencer” whose protegee Aspen surprisingly ends up becoming way more successful. Momfluencing content is aimed at mothers of all ages to show how their lives can be beautiful and efficient at the same time.

Aspen had been struggling hard until Meredith took her up. She's got three kids, one of whom has diabetes; no insurance; and a resentful, low-earning husband (for LA). As she puts it, she feels "like I'm on a hamster wheel, needing to come up with nonstop content to feed the perpetually hungry social media machine. But my family, spoiled by my success, had no idea how I was breaking my back to earn as much as I could for their sake."

When she met Meredith, Aspen only had a measly five thousand followers because her content was too real and “uncurated,” but once she starts faking it in elaborate ways, her numbers blow up. Under Meredith's canny guidance about looks and content, Aspen soon outpaces her mentor, but success is a torment because it's absolutely voracious--it makes her hungrier for more, more, more. She's increasingly desperate to churn out video and photos of her home and family to show how perfect her life is.

And pretty soon, the All About Eve bell starts to ring as the two women's friendship plunges downhill--and takes a wonderfully bizarre and vicious detour halfway through the book.

Dealing with racism, jealousy, and greed in subtle ways, the novel is alternately hilarious and chilling, an indictment of social media fakery and emptiness. I read it straight through the first time, laughing on many pages, appalled on others, and transfixed by the author's keen eye for detail and paradox. She's also given her dual narrators, Meredith and Aspen, pitch-perfect voices, and that extends to all of the minor characters too--even the kids.

Sutanto excels at hitting readers with the unexpected, and there are several jaw-dropping twists near the end along with what feels like a super-subtle reference to Sharon Stone's Diabolique.

I don't dog-ear books, but I did find myself putting Post-its on page after page. I even read memorable passages to my spouse, like one about a picture-perfect dinner that is a total, tasteless sham and provokes TikTok trolls to unleash a fusillade of mockery.

Sutanto's electrifying novel is a brilliantly-plotted, masterful thriller. More than that, it’s an evisceration of how social media in the TikTok/Instagram era oppresses and intimidates far too many people and can ruin their lives when it's ostensibly trying to do the very opposite.

Lev Raphael is the author of ten satirical Nick Hoffman crime novels set in the hothouse world of academia where jealousy and greed have their own very special place in the scheme of things. In a rave review, The New York Times Book Review said his characters can be compared to the Borgias. Lev was the longtime mystery and thriller reviewer for the Detroit Free Press.

Image by StockSnap from Pixabay