I can see the contemporary relevance, the modern attitude, the zeitgeisty tone of this novel., In those terms, it has some value. But I found it hard to read, monotone, rather grim and off putting in it’s cruelty and obsessiveness. Good luck to it but not for me.

At first, I'm a Fan appears vapid. It's about a young woman obsessed with both a philanderer and one of the other women he's seeing. These people aren't even important enough to the narrative to have actual names; they're "the man I want to be with" and "the woman I am obsessed with," respectively. They're not people; they're archetypes. They can be stand-ins for people we know in our own lives.

What sets this book apart is that the unnamed narrator is self-aware. She sees the object of her desire for who he is, but she can't pull herself away. She is cheating on her boyfriend, which doesn't make her much better than the man she lusts after. She is at that age where her friends are becoming real adults with responsibilities and children and she's moving back home after her cuckolded boyfriend finally leaves her.

She channels her loneliness into social media obsession, online-stalking then real life-stalking the woman she's obsessed with. She pores over every image she posts, completely infatuated while simultaneously critiquing the context of these posts within the larger world. Patel writes of her obsession's posts, "She espouses the values of stewardship, of taking care of the land, of the importance and necessity of farmers. Her lack of awareness of being a white woman borne of a white man in a country baked in the violence of European colonialism, dictating values that were and are already being practiced by Indigenous people before they were forcibly disinherited, is the way in which liberalism separates itself from the systems of racism and geocide from the structures that organise the way the world benefits particular group over others."

The transitions from light, inconsequential romantic dilemmas to sharp societal critiques can be jarring. Patel is intelligent and thoughtful in the way she interrogates the racism inherent in modern culture, but it sometimes felt out of place in the narrative she's telling. The most glaring example for me was when she was talking about her lover's relationship with his wife, which she assumes cannot be as deep as the connection she has with him. She said, "It is not convenient to the story I tell myself, of our star-crossed and obviously meant-to-be kind of love." Then there is a paragraph break, followed by, "The fervent, paranoid, obsessive behavior exhibited from Trump's base, which was given lighter fluid during his administration is uncomfortable for me." For a story that takes place in the UK and is primarily about romantic entanglements, it felt like it came from a different book entirely.

Patel is a gifted writer, but this book didn't keep my attention. I didn't care about the characters or their decisions at all. While passages were contemplative and well-written, the story as a whole did not quite coalesce for me.

I thought this book had interesting themes around obsessions and power dynamics. It was tough to get through because of how unlikeable the main character is and that narrator archetype will definitely appeal to a niche audience. The plot was a bit too scattered and hectic for my taste but again, I think there are a lot qualities to this book that will resonate with a very specfic set of readers.

An unnamed narrator is in a relationship. Well, two relationships, really. As well as several parasocial relationships. It’s messy. And, while she navigates her romantic feelings and friendships, she ruminates over injustices and the human experience.

1️⃣ The main character makes a lot of ✨choices✨. She’s not particularly likable, but her perspective and story is interesting.

2️⃣ The timeline is scattered—you jump around without warning or anchor. I love this choice and think it really amplifies the chaos the main character is creating for herself.

3️⃣ While the main character muddles through personal issues, she works through a range of broader, societal problems that are unavoidable. There’s no safe space for her.

4️⃣ I love how social media is examined—both from the passive scroller’s view and the critique of influencer culture.

5️⃣ I enjoyed this, and it’s fairly short. A solid three stars🌟🌟🌟. Fans of Luster will like this book. (There’s also some comparison to be made to Crazy Ex-Girlfriend but without the comedy.)

From the opening line of Sheena Patel’s I’M A FAN, I was hooked. Told in a series of funny, scorching, intensely introspective vignettes, it’s the story of an unnamed female narrator who toggles in her fixation between “the woman I am obsessed with”—a white American influencer whose following stems from her famous father and her impeccable (read: wealthy) aesthetics—and “the man I want to be with”—an unfaithfully married man who keeps her at arms length but seems addicted to her attention. The chapters ricochet around in time, creating a kaleidoscopic portrait of the narrator as she prostrates herself before the man she wants to be with, falls deeper into her parasocial relationship with the woman she is obsessed with, and issues searing reflections on art, race, gender, class, power, and access. The writing is intense, biting, and whip smart, just like the narrator herself.

For anyone who has ever gotten a queasy feeling of excitement when the profile picture of the person you are internet stalking gets ringed with red. Suggested pairings: The Possession by Annie Ernaux; The Shame by Makenna Goodman; and Luster by Raven Leilani.

4.25 STARS

✨ FOR FANS OF: My Year of Rest and Relaxation, unhinged/unlikable narrators, no real plot, meditations on influencer culture

⭐️WHAT IT’S ABOUT: An unnamed narrator’s stream of consciousness about two toxic people who she creatively calls “the man I want to be with” and “the woman I am obsessed with”.

WHAT I LIKED:
🌟what a bombastic narrator! Flawed, chaotic, extremely online— one of the most unhinged who is somehow compulsively readable & sometimes justifiable in her unhingedness. I immediately want to read whatever else Sheena Patel puts out just based off the development she gives her main character.
🌟Indictments of class, race, & media are spread throughout the plot, inviting reader reflection on how they interact with exoticism & fetishization.
🌟The vignettes were short & the titles were fun— lots of clever wordplay & allusions turned sideways for a skewed look at parasocial relationships & influencer culture.

WHAT I DIDN’T:
☁️ I wanted more sustained resistance from the narrator & wish it had gone a bit further, but I guess that’s the point of this book: that so much of modern life feels impossible under patriarchy and capitalism.
☁️Some sections felt clinical & disparate from the narrator’s voice, like there was a “social commentary” voice and a “oops I’m unhinged and just a character” voice.

⭐️OVERALL: the reviews of this book are polarizing— StoryGraph people either give it a 1 or a 5. If you don’t like walking away from a book feeling unsettled, you might should skip it. I’m more in the 4.25 camp; I liked it because the prose’s style was addictive & brutal, plus it was a rip-roaring 207 pages, but I see where people can be fed up that it doesn’t “go” anywhere. I, however, found it hard to put down!

‼️ Check trigger warnings, as always. Thanks to @graywolfpress and @netgalley for my advanced reader’s copy in exchange for an honest review!

This book has been lauded quite a bit and I had been eagerly waiting to get my hands on it. Thanks to NetGalley and Graywolf press for the ARC.

This is a quick read single speaker story of an unreliable narrator. The author pulls it off with ease though. The pace of the story feels like a sign of our times. Great read. Eagerly awaiting future works from the author.

What an "in your face", intense ride this book is. It's a single narrative by an unnamed female protagonist. in her early 30s.

You're dropped right into her situation - which is having a one-sided relationship with a married, well-off guy, while she's in a relationship with her boyfriend that's tepid at best.

Oh, and the unnamed guy she's having the affair with is also juggling other women on the side.

She's a "fan" of one of the women he's involved in - she's an Influencer on social media.

"Fan" also seems to apply to her status with the guy.

All of the prose is done in choppy vignettes with really interesting chapter titles such as "the math isn't mathing". This kept the intrigue going.

I wouldnt say this book is plot driven because I didnt expect her situation - which is both enjoyable, adrenaline-inducing and agonizing - to change during the course of this short book. But i was just in for the writing. For the rush. I enjoyed the way that the author imparts details about the main character in cleverly delivered and spaced dribs and drabs.

In her debut novel, Patel describes the life of an unarmed narrator as she tries to dissect her relationship with a man that can’t be bothered to be “tied down.” As she learns more about herself and the other women he has been seeing, she finds herself obsessed with one woman in particular. Will this obsession continue to grow? Will she learn to walk away or become more involved in trying to sort this man out?

This novel was a bit scattered and hard to follow at times. I enjoyed the premise, but the execution was lacking a bit as I felt like the story would sometimes drift off course.

Overall this was an interesting read. It may be one of those books that need to be read more than once to understand and enjoy the author’s ideas fully.

The publisher provided ARC via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

Unfortunately, I don’t think this one is for me at the time. The first few chapters were very gripping, witty, and funny, but the further into it I got the more lackluster and muddy it became. The short chapters make it very digestible but at times I still felt lost, which I don’t love in a short-story / essay-collection writing style book where the chapters are interrelated with the same characters.

Maybe I’ll be intrigued enough / motivated to come back later, but right now I’m DNF-ing at 40%. As for now I’d sit this one at 2.75 ⭐️ for me!

Thank you to the author Sheena Patel, publishers Gray Wolf Press, and as always NetGalley, for an advance digital copy of I'M A FAN.

In I'M A FAN, a nameless narrator, a woman of color, attempts to navigate a life in shambles and dodge the fallout from self-destructive behaviors, while sabotaging her relationship with her nameless white partner, "my boyfriend," and the romantic and intellectual privilege he represents by his proximity, and obsessing over the also nameless targets of her also self-destructive obsession with "the man I want to me with," also white, but older, wealthy, and socially established, and that man's wife, "the woman I am obsessed with," again white, but younger, a social media lifestyle influencer, and the genetic beneficiary of social and intellectual reputation. This very brilliant novel offers a completely binge-able expression of millennial angst coupled with scathing critique of racial, patriarchal, and class privilege and the frustration of living outside the social, professional, and personal lubrication it offered.

I'm a real stickler for plot, and this book's plot is skeletal like a dead tree, but I still enjoyed how all the pieces stuck together. Form helped keep my attention. The book is designed as a collection of tightly connected crots that could truly be read in any order, outside of the first and last. This patchwork form isn't new, but feels that way from the perspective of this manic-feeling narrator who isn't ill but really just tired of being thwarted.

If you like an exciting read that punches you right in your emotions, makes you think and wonder about systems like plot, fiction, racism, and social privilege, this is your book.

Rating: 🗣🗣🗣🗣🗣 / 5 voices shouting
Recommend? Completely, read this!
Finished: May 21 2023
Format: Advance Digital, NetGalley, screen reader
Read this if you like:
🪢 Experimental form
🟰 Social justice
👥️ Unreliable narrator
😈 Unlikable characters
❤️‍🔥 Love triangles

A deep, twisted, and chaotic dive into the mind of a truly unwell woman. Her obsession and desperation are expressed erratically and with wild abandon. She, and all of the characters in this book, are terrible. I adored the protagonist quite a bit. It was thrilling to read the psychotic monologues and find strong echoes of relatable emotions deep in the muck of insanity. This is a mix of My Year of Rest and Relaxation and Acts of Desperation. Her loneliness and inadequacy mixed with her muted rage towards whiteness makes for a compelling character, however dislikable. All of this set up for a great book, but, and this could be an e-reader thing, the story is presented in long blocks of text that aren’t broken up in any way. This made it quite difficult for me to get through, despite how interesting the content was. Also, after about a third of the way through it felt extremely repetitive. I enjoyed the read but wouldn’t purchase this or read it again.

Sheena Patel welcomes readers into the often-times surreal world of online influencers, followers, lurkers, hate scrollers, ghosters, stalkers, and more in her impressive debut novel, “I’m A Fan”.

Patel, a founding member of the “4 Brown Girls Who Write” Poetry Collective, has all her skills on display, including those of Film/TV Writer/Director/Showrunner.

We are immediately thrust into the tragi-comic world of our insecure, needy narrator who thinks that she knows what she wants, but isn’t at all sure how to get it.

The narrative is edgy, erotic, degrading, hopeful, and sad. Just when you think that the novel is getting hopelessly unhinged, superficial, flaccid, and farcical, it veers into a smart, subversive, cunning, and transgressive treatment of racism, classism, sexism, and feminism. Patel takes her reader on a startling ride with never a dull moment. As exhilarating as that can feel, there is a constant fear that it is all a bit too fast, loose and reckless. “I’m A Fan” is a story for our strange and challenging times that is way more than simply life on The Gram..

All the best at all upcoming awards events. You deserve every bit of it.

Thanks to Graywolf Press and NetGalley for the eARC

I’m not sure how I feel about this. I was so excited to read this based on the summary and was initially thinking I could recommend this to students because of the incisive commentary. It’s a touch too inappropriate for high schoolers with the overt sex references, but I might pull out excerpts with particularly insightful comments.
Patel captured self-loathing and its capacity for self-destruction well as we met a character who allowed herself to be overpowered by a man who had no interest of loving her back.
There was complexity and humor, but it got exhausting to read. This is such a short book, but I got tired of her writing style and how unlikable everyone was (even though that was part of the point).
I do recommend for the overall themes and commentary, but did not like as much as I wanted to.

what a unique lil book this was! loved the chaotic energy of the narrator, the humor & honesty, the often unspoken relatability of social media stalking, and the way the story unraveled, the themes explored outside of the 'love' (if you could call it that) story that took place -- class, race, fame, vulnerability, obsession, infatuation, gender, social media, just to name a few.

full review 2 come soon <3

Sheena Patel's I'm a Fan is a searing and, frankly, unnerving examination of romance and obsession in the internet age, This book was incredibly fast-paced and engaging, even as it unsettled me to sit in the mind of someone so desperate to be noticed. I absolutely loved this book, and look forward to reading more of Patel's incisive work.

Wow What a Crazy Ride!
Sheena Patel has created a fast moving single speaker story of a woman explaining her romantic obsession as she recounts the interactions and considers contemporary society as a whole.

The Narrator is obsessed and her sharp voice will pull you in. She is unapologetic and angry and makes keen observations on social media and the patriarchy. It's truly a fast moving, mind melding read. I look forward to Sheena Patel's next book as I am a Fan! #Imafan #SheenaPatel
#GraywolfPress