Followers

Followers

by Anna Davies

Briana has just finished her first semester as a transfer student to a private school in Maine and it hasn't gone well.  Her mother has fond memories of being a social butterfly at MacHale, but Briana just can't seem to catch a break.

When she decides to stay around for winter term and audition for Hamlet, she hopes to really shine and maybe even become the popular girl she's always dreamed of being.  If she can be Ophelia, she can join the theatre kids and really get a social life that she can be proud of (and maybe shut her mother up).

However, when the director dies suddenly, the school decides to open the auditions to both MacHale students and the "townies" of Forsyth.  Suddenly, Briana has more competition than she can manage and she's left without a part.

To make her feel better, the director makes her the social media director and tells her to tweet the entire rehearsal process.  While not enthusiastic about it, Briana gives it a try only to find that someone is beating her to the news.  In fact, that person is tweeting events before they even happen... including murder.

Final thoughts:  Ugh.  So annoying.  Red herrings were dropped everywhere.  There's a recently discovered body of a girl who went missing twenty years before so there's the threat of a ghost story.  Red herring.  Bree's mother claims to have been a famous student at the school, but the only picture Bree finds has her mom in the back row while the soon-to-be-murdered student is performing, so is mom a murderer trying to force her daughter into the spotlight?  Nope.  Red herring.  There's a constant whodunit vibe, but nothing comes of it.  Everyone seems so uncaring about the deaths of people in the beginning.  Ms. Davies, please note that no one casts an understudy for a minor part, which Ophelia really is in the grand scheme of things, and then doesn't cast understudies for the 4-5 other parts that are really more important.  Ophelia needs an understudy/matinee actress, but Hamlet, the main guy, the one in EVERY SINGLE SCENE, doesn't need some sort of back-up?  Ummm... Nope.  There's also the annoying book jacket information, which is wrong.  No one hacks her account... ever.  The death referred to on the jacket is actually the third, not the first.  The tweet quoted isn't in the book.  Grr...  The ending is poorly done, sudden, and not very good.  It's really predictable even though it keeps trying to surprise the reader.  Not worth the time.

Rating: 2/5