A funny novel with an assured voice and a brilliantly clever concept. This is a novel that interrogates our relationships with one another, the divisiveness of global politics in the 21st century and the way that social media can create a shocking platform for false truths. Although it is a fascinating commentary on the state of our world, it felt like it may have worked more powerfully as a short story.

I don't think I was quite the right audience for this book, which possibly makes this review a little unfair.

The premise is great - on the eve of Trump's inauguration, our main character discovers her boyfriend is a conspiracy theory nut.

Unfortunately, it just didn't draw me in. To my eyes, the initial pages were mostly impenetrable walls of text, with a character I didn't connect to or even like. However it's probably fair to say that in a literary read you should expect to be challenged somewhat, and perhaps I failed on that front. The author plays with style and wit - it just wasn't for me. I'm sure it's smart and clever, but it didn't pull me into the story.

The blurb on the back of this book really made me want to read this offering from new author Oyler. “Narrated in a voice as seductive as it is subtly subversive, Fake Accounts is a wry, provocative and very funny debut novel about identity and authenticity in the age of the internet.” Unfortunately, I found it neither seductive nor provocative and rather lacking in wit. Wry? I'll give that one.

This is a novel for the millennials, the generation who are almost expected to question their identity and find their own, unique style of self. With that I have no issue but, at least in part, I think that it is that that makes the work rather inaccessible to those of us who are perhaps a little older or do not wish to, or cannot, jump into the protagonist's head. As a result, a work which should perhaps have been received as seminal within an emerging modern fiction genre falls rather flat.

The premise is simple and yet full of opportunity: a young woman gives into temptation and snoops on her partner's phone to find that he has secretly been posting to conspiracy theory blogs. This is completely alien to who she believes him to be. What follows is, I think, intended to be an analysis of how people’s online lives and real lives interact and how truthful we all are. There is ample opportunity to offer pithy analysis and commentary on that which is exposed. However, Oyler tries to do this via a very wordy, stream-of-consciousness, an internal monologue which, rather than having punch feels rather contrived and bland. It took me a while to get into the writing style with several sections having to be re-read to check that I'd really understood. It is not uncommon for sentences to be extremely long: they are well punctuated but struck me as almost the antithesis of the online style of communication on which the story sits. At times I felt as if the author had sought to use as many long and alternative words as possible, swallowing a thesaurus, which had the effect of lessening the argument that was being made.

Perhaps I am just not the target audience?

With thanks to the author, publisher and NetGalley for the ARC.

I loved the first half of this book and was intrigued to see where it would go in the second half. If only that had continued in the same sharp and amusing vein. But, and perhaps I'm just too old to find it interesting, I found the second half, full as it was of the blow-by-blow accounts of fake-profiled internet dating, boring and repetitive.

I can see what this book is going for and I can't say it succeeds. The tone is decidedly off. It tries for a Convenience Store Woman/Temporary, so that we have this strangely upbeat millennial narrator, but Oyler's style lacks the 'zing' that made those former titles so enjoyable. The paragraphs here are so dense and dull. I understand that it is trying to be satirical of capitalism, consumerism, modern America, mass and entertainment culture, conspiracy theorists....but I can't say that Oyler has anything interesting or new to say about these subjects.

When I first started this book I was super into it.

It’s the story of an unnamed narrator (a device I love) who discovers on the eve of Trump’s inauguration that her boyfriend is a conspiracy theorist.

I was completely hooked by this idea, however I don’t think this part of the story lasts more than the first third, and it was after this third that I started to lose interest.

I loved the writing, I loved the intrigue of the plot and I was curious to see where it was going. I loved the sections in New York but not so much the ones in Berlin.

After the shock of the initial twist, however, this book became very similar to lot of other books I’ve read in the last 3 or 4 years - messy young people who don’t know what they’re doing with their life.

It was also really unclear what was the truth and what was fake and at times it tried to be meta with references to “my novel” which just didn’t do it for me.

I really found the book a slog after the initial 100 or so pages and I was a bit disappointed. Perhaps it needs to be more clear where the plot goes after the initial set up.

3 stars

I must admit to finding myself confused at parts of this book, but overall I felt that it fulfilled what it set out to do: it is definitely an experimental narrative and I think you can tell that Lauren Oyler is an extremely talented writer. I am very interested to see what she writes next!

I found this really difficult to read and did not engage with the characters. However, I suspect that it will do reasonably well and just didn't click with me

I’m afraid I’d had enough of Fake Accounts after about a third of the book and gave up.

The set-up sounded intriguing: a young woman finds that her partner has secretly been posting to conspiracy theory blogs, which seems entirely alien to who she believes him to be. This leads into an investigation and analysis of how people’s on-line lives and real lives interact, the role of truth and lies in our lives today and so on. This is at the core of much of modern existence and should have been intriguing. In fact what I got was an extremely wordy internal monologue, largely consisting of an unfiltered stream-of-consciousness as the narrator spends hours on-line, falls for her partner, Donald Trump is elected, she eats and buys stuff she probably shouldn’t...and so on. Frankly, after I’d waded through the best part of 100 pages of this (it felt like far more) with no sign of the promised analysis, I lost the will to carry on.

Lauren Oyler writes well, but it’s all so diverse and diffuse that I found very little focus in the narrative. There is the odd pithy remark, like “some people on Twitter seemed to believe every problem could be solved with publicity,” which is neat but hardly a penetrating or original analysis. The publicity blurb tells us that, “Narrated in a voice as seductive as it is subtly subversive, Fake Accounts is a wry, provocative and very funny debut novel about identity and authenticity in the age of the internet.” I’m afraid I found the voice neither seductive nor subtly subversive and the claim that it’s very funny is funnier than anything in the book itself, which I found flat and tedious.

I’m sorry to be so critical, but I thought this was well-written but an unfocussed mess. I can’t recommend it.

(My thanks to Fourth Estate for an ARC via NetGalley.)

This is an interesting one - I felt the social media involvement was a bit extreme but the narrator did have some interesting insights and it was very clever. It was almost stream-of-consciousness in style, as we follow the train of thought of the main character in great detail, with little speech punctuation. On balance, I prefer a more conventionally told story.

I loved the idea of this and it is a topic that hugely interests me. However it did disappoint a little and I felt it could’ve been executed slightly better.

My friend Apryl will love this book. She loves books which get a bit weird and abstract and meta, at points, and where not a huge amount happens but it’s all stretched out into 300+ pages. Apryl will especially love the point where (minor spoiler alert) the author says something along the lines of ‘this bit doesn’t even fit/make real sense but I whacked it in & the reader will just have to stick it’ (I’m paraphrasing. End of minor spoiler alert).

I always feel about these types of books (which Apryl will love) that they would work better as short stories. But. Apryl will be happy. So that’s something ☺️

An intriguing idea, but I couldnt get my head into this book, sorry. A bit too jumpy around and post modern for me, I think i have to admit I prefer a more traditional storyline. A rare DNF,

Fake Accounts is a smart novel about social media, identity and making up your own life/story. It’s got an interesting style (the unnamed character is talking to the reader and general public), it’s a fast read, but it is not always a very interesting one to be honest. Also I found it long-winded at times. An okay book I had expected more from.
Thank you 4th Estate and Netgalley for the ARC.

I really enjoyed the first section of this whip-smart book which contains some fantastically dry takes on the world of hipsters/ social media and performative political activisim.

The middle lags a bit and although the writing is still sharp and funny, the pace really drops and very little happens.
The ending can be seen coming a mile off but is still entertaining and overall this is an enjoyable debut.

Afraid this book didn't really do it for me - the premise sounded good, but it just wasn't very interesting.

Girl finds out her boyfriend is a conspiracy theorist - but there's not much detail on the conspiracies itself or any questioning of his motivation. Finding herself alone, girl embarks on own subterfuge - creating numerous backstories for herself.

Could have been so much more - different narrative styles for the internet bits etc. And though it's hard to give a personality to anyone who's pretending to be someone else, I just didn't get a real feel for the characters.

Fake Accounts by Lauren Oyler is about relationships and dating and living abroad and having an online presence. I enjoyed the more plot-driven parts that propelled the narrative and could have done with less of the pontificating.

An intriguing premise and the blurb makes it sound unmissable. Unfortunately, the way the story is told was really not for me. I can see this one being quite polarising, and it's not easy to get into.

Fake Accounts has an intriguing premise: a young woman snoops on her boyfriend's phone and discovers he has a secret life as a conspiracy theorist on Instagram. Instead of acting on this information immediately she sits on it, biding her time and deciding how best to handle the situation.

Oyler's debut has some timely themes - identity and self in the 2010s/2020s - but these were presented in a way which made the book virtually impenetrable for me. The narrative is written almost entirely as if the reader is in the protagonist's head, and it makes for an incredibly stifling experience. Whilst I found myself relating to many of the thoughts the protagonists has, it was all a bit too realistic and close for comfort at times, and, honestly, doesn't make for scintillating reading. I felt like not insubstantial chunks of these thoughts could have been left out as they didn't further the narrative, and as a result I found my interest waning.

I had no idea what I was getting into with this book, I just liked the name and the cover and the fact it was by an American female debut author and it just goes to show that sometimes judging a book by its cover is a good thing. I really enjoyed it.
I found myself implicitly trusting the narrator (despite the title) and enjoyed being guided through the retrospective story (and her tangential thoughts) by the wry internal voice and the straight forward way she viewed the world. At a few points this straightforwardness felt a little like cultural events and everyday references were being explained to me in detail, but I guess means that a) the book would be accessible to people who aren't millennial/gen X and b) fits to the nature of the book in a sort of granular breakdown of social phenomena.
Overall I found the book very entertaining and clever. I got a little lost 2/3 in with all the fake dating personas, but I also enjoyed the way the form was being played with but I guess..."that's part of the point".