Caroline Calloway is both relentlessly charming and peculiar in equal measure. Despite her controversies and moments of strange verbosity (most of which I genuinely enjoyed while reading Scammer), she is undeniably a good writer. Scammer is a tapestry of her delicate prose sewn together with all the worst parts about her. I'm glad that she's finally written her book — Scammer is the honest, crude, and witty Caroline the internet loves to hate.

🎧Audio Book Review🎧

Scammer
Caroline Callaway

🌟🌟🌟🌟

Let me start by saying that I'm really not a big reader of memoirs, so this read was quite a way out of my comfort zone.
But I do love to mix up my reading and thought given it was a fairly short read, that I'd give it a go.

Well, to be completely honest, I'm really not sure what I just read or exactly how I feel about it!

This is the memoir of a person I'd never heard of, nor would they be someone I'd have ever thought I'd have been interested in connecting with (not socially, not virtually) - so all in all this was a tricky read for me.

On the one hand, this felt like a very typical response that people of this generation have to the way they are treated in the world.

The author came across as an entitled rich kid who took from those around her, expected everything in life to be handed over and then complained when things got tough or when people turned against them.

However, if you look beneath the extremely lengthy tirades and the many diverse anecdotes, you will see someone who has lived a varied and full life and someone who has made many mistakes.

I feel that the writing of this memoir is acknowledgement of these mistakes - whether this is also proof that they've learned from these mistakes, I'm not too sure?

There were definitely moments that shocked me but there were also moments where as a mum, I felt a tenderness towards someone who was clearly struggling with life and their own purpose.

As much as I don't agree with many of the things that they did or decisions they made, I admire their determination to achieve their life long ambition of writing a book and their total honestly in some of the revelations that come with this book.

I'd be interested to see where they choose to take this from here and how their life might change from now on.
A difficult, but interesting read.



💕Thank you to the author, publisher and NetGalley for my ARC copy - this is my honest review 💕

The women the myth the legend!
This felt exactly how I expected really, very similar to her Instagram captions, long and sometimes rambling, sometimes hard to follow, shocking but all still enjoyable.
Listening to the audiobook felt like an extra treat with Caroline narrating her story herself

My first thought upon finishing this was that it feels entirely too well written to be a modern memoir. My second was that Caroline Calloway is probably the most interesting character ever to emerge from internet fame.

And the question with Calloway has always been one of character. I don’t mean this in the moral sense (if you’re really summoning outrage at this point about her supposed “scams,” I’d urge you to focus on the real harm-doers who have become both too powerful and too numerous to allow any space for high-handed moralizing about people like Calloway).

Instead, I’m speaking of character in terms of persona and performance. Because who is Caroline Calloway? A real woman, certainly, but also a character wrought from her own pen, a curated persona meant-at varying points-to provoke, to intrigue, to titillate, to atone, or just to make you think. Where it gets both messy and interesting is in separating Caroline the person from Caroline the character, or perhaps in wondering if we even need or want to.

I originally became interested in Calloway via her Academic Fairytale Instagram content, but she’s held my attention since, and I’m glad that she’s evolving while still holding onto the ethos and aesthetics that drew me to her in the first place.

And yes, she is a far, far better writer than Natalie.

Ah man I’m so torn over this, torn between faint disgust and awe.
I was a huge lover of Caroline’s instagram back in 2015-2017, and seeing scammer was available I just had to give it a listen. She was brilliant and dazzling in her instagram captions (her and Natalie) back then. However, as a book I’m not sure it’s a platform that works? Listening makes it better but it feels overindulgent to read aloud five hours worth of clippings of your previous writings that’s you’ve stitched together? And I say that as someone that loves memoir.
Then almost like she knew it was a possible opinion she brings up that men do it all the time, and I suppose there is some hidden misogyn that makes me have that opinion.
Making a mood board of the character that you want to be in your life? It’s brilliance but it’s tinged with something really sad, like she’s living her whole life, for ‘the plot’. But that’s me thinking it’s sad, that’s not her thinking it’s sad.

For the writing it’s 4 stars, man can the girl write, and I did really enjoy listening, But for the way she writes about her life and some of the decisions she’s made it’s got a 3 stars.
Also hate how huge chunks of it are her talking about other books she’ll publish one day which isn’t interesting.

Better than I was expecting tbh, having been familiar with Caroline for years now. Despite the reviews saying she's out-out-touch and lacks any introspection, I think Caroline is actually self-aware to a disturbing degree - to the point where I was deeply concerned when I found some of her thoughts relatable. I also think she knows that and loves it. The way she writes (which is well, btw) makes me feel like she's in on the joke, but she's also having fun watching people get squirmy as they involuntarily resonate with her. There was literally no point in this book, and you can fault her for being self-centered enough to write it - but that WAS the point, and she's laughing all the way to the bank.