Mia is a social media influencer whose life revolves around providing her half of a million followers content all day everyday on Pictey, a social media platform for posting pictures. When she isn’t out capturing the most perfect shot to post to her feed, she is doing her best to interact with her followers. Unlike most influencers, Mia believes that what she does is not just for ad money. She believes that her carefully curated posts and captions help to spark conversations, friendships, and connections. She posts only positive and motivational things because she believes that people depend on her.

Paige is an employee at Pictey as an enforcer on the Standards Enforcement and Quality Assurance Team reviewing flagged content. She is a socially awkward introvert that is very cynical of the influencers on Pictey’s platform and the people that buy into their online personalities. To Paige, its all a scam for influencers to get money. Besides work, Paige doesn’t socialize much, her job is her life. When she’s not working at Pictey, she is scrolling through the feeds being a spectator to the lives of influencers and their followers.

This story is about how these 2 very different people’s lives intersect and paths cross after very traumatic events that happen in their lives simultaneously. Both are forced to not only look at their lives through a different lens, but to also live their lives differently and what they both learn changes them forever. We see how they respond, reflect, and attempt to reinvent themselves into the people they truly believe they already are.

The Bright Side of Going Dark is a great look at our dependency on not only our electronic devices but the social platforms they have created. Instead of having in person social interactions, we have become used to expressing ourselves through photos, memes, likes, and replies. We face time, teleconference, email, and text instead of sitting down or meeting up and just being in the moment. What happens when those virtual platforms are taken away and we are forced to face our life? How will we respond to this change, especially when we THINK it is a necessary part of our lives? This story does an awesome job of showing how social media and electronic devices can be very powerful and very productive tools IF USED WITH THE BEST INTENTIONS AND RESPONSIBLY. It’s about finding balance between being in the moment and also keeping up with the times.

This story goes a lot deeper than just talking about an influencer and a cynical computer programmer. It touches on very real topics such as depression, anxiety, attempted suicide, and loss. A lot of these things are exactly why some people prefer social media to in person interactions and on the flip side, a lot of people have experienced these things because of their social media dependency.
At various times throughout the book, I saw a lot of myself in both Mia and Paige. They both thought they were doing the right thing and neither realized just how much their decisions to act or not to had on others.

As an avid social media user and micro influencer, I absolutely loved this book! It’s fresh, fun, very relevant, and very, very relatable.

Thank you for the opportunity to read this. I will be posting a full review to Goodreads, Amazon, and Instagram.

This cute contemporary women's novel alternates between two perspectives. Mia is an extremely popular social media influencer on fictional social media site Pictey who doesn't know what to do with herself when her fiance calls off their (totally sponsored) wedding right before the wedding. Paige is a socially awkward woman who works for Pictey reviewing flags on posts/comments, but actually disdains social media herself, but ends up getting involved with Mia's account and starts to see the good side of social media as well as the dark side. Along the way, both women learn to connect to people in real life. The theme that people's lives (whether in person or on social media) are often not as perfect as they look on the outside is definitely a good one, but I also liked that while extolling personal connection, the book doesn't completely trash everything about social media but considers some of the good ways it can help connect people as well as well as its negatives. I liked Kelly Harms' book last year "The Overdue Life of Amy Byler" a little better, but she has definitely earned herself on a spot on my list of authors I will continue to read regardless of what they write.

I requested a review copy of this book to read on vacation - I thought it would be light and fun, an easy escape. I was delighted to find that it was so much more. This is the best fictional consideration I've seen of how different people, each with their own unmet needs and personal struggles, deal with social media. The story unfolds in alternating chapters between Mia, a high-ranking influencer on a FB-like platform, and Paige, a borderline agoraphobe who works behind the scenes at that platform, policing problematic posts when they get flagged for inappropriate content. These characters are exceptionally well developed, with meaningful backstories and family dynamics that influence their choices, both online and off. And every character in the book is someone you want to know more about as you read. I appreciated that there's no easy fallback "bad guy/girl" here, but rather an array of interesting people working out problems we all (or those of us who spend anytime online) face ourselves. Highly recommend & I look forward to reading more from this author!

A great read on the modern addiction to social media, humorous with just the right amount of darkness (pun intended!) thrown in. Thanks NetGalley!

I had difficulty warming up to this book. Both Mia and Paige live behind a screen. Mia is a social media influencer who lives to post. Paige is a safety standards emforcer for the social media platform used by Mia. Paige assumes Mia's online identity when Mia ditches it. I found both characters to be sad and lonely. I finished the book, and all turns out ok, but I wasn't a huge fan.

This book was fine. It's the dangers of spending so much time on social media and living your life online in one compact story. It's not terribly subtle or nuanced, but readable

What bothered me about it was the pacing and the writing/characters. It's really slow, nothing happens for the first half of the book even though if you've read the blurb you know what's going to happen. So it's painstaking getting there, which if you buy the character development then you'll be fine. 

But that brings me to my next point, I found the writing to be very lazy when it came to character development. For writing a book about technology, the author either doesn't understand how technology works, chose to ignore the complexity of working in tech, or was too lazy to properly research any of it (sure who can't hack hospital records). The result is Paige. 

She's depicted as socially isolated and awkward, and basically an IT robot with limited feelings and thrust behind the IT stereotype it was just such a shame. She could've been a complex character but because we kept going back to the dangers of technology I just felt like it was a dehumanization of IT workers and lacked creativity. I would've appreciated Paige much more in the backdrop of other details. Work in tech, fine, but it just seemed like a cop out that she was a self-proclaimed wonderful coder and then had all these emotional/social issues. It made me think readers would see her and think sure but she's an IT robot anyway, not a real person when these are real issues that affect even the least tech savvy person. There was a lot of Paige that could've been unpacked but wasn't and that was too bad.

Mia was meh. I couldn't really connect with her, I know there are probably people out there like her but found her whiny, which was probably the point.

I didn't find the ending to be realistic, there are consequences after all and nothing was really addressed, and it just didn't feel like the book did justice to any of the major topics it broached. 2.5 stars.

To be quite honest, this was a DNF for me personally. Once I was reading about a penis on multiple pages in a row within the beginning 5% of the book, I was totally turned off from reading anymore but I pushed through but lost interest as I did not enjoy the characters. Kelly Harms is a great author and I enjoyed The Good Luck Girls of Shipwreck Lane (one of her previous works), but I just couldn't get into this one.

Do you want to take over the place of someone’s life? But think again because nothing is for free and nothing as it seems! You may also take over the burdens of someone that you have no idea how to handle it!

This book is remarkable, powerful, riveting and incredibly written women’s fiction. It’s about living, breathing and being asocial people who buried their faces into their phones and losing the connection with the real life. It is also about dysfunctional, estranged family relations, making changes in your life to reach out your second chances, making peace with your depression and choosing different path in your life to catch your own happiness.

Mia Bell’s life looks too good to be true.

Popularity around social media arena with her influencer gig: CHECK!

A handsome, dreamy fiancée: CHECK!

A cute, adorable dog: CHECK AGAIN! It seems like lucky bitch live her dream. But what a minute! Why is she calling her wedding off and shutting down her social media accounts. Is she out of her mind? How many people want to be her! Does she have any idea? And yes, she just moves with her mother. Yes, there must be something really really wrong with her!

But don’t worry a geeky techie is about to hack her account and replaces her place. Her name is Paige Miller and she is reluctant imposter. She only wants to connect with her sister and does this as a prank. But at the end nobody laughs at her!

This book starts like a regular chic lit, light, fluffy, swoony reading but it’s not even close. It’s dealing with feminism empowerment, clinic depression and so many heavy stuffs but author’s witty, emotional and relaxing words give you enough positive energy and you easily go and become witness of the emotional turmoil of the characters because she enlighten us our vision to see the brightest sides at the darkest places and help us keep enjoying yourself and smiling the progression of the story.

Overall: It’s entertaining, smart with great sense of humour and tear jerking, poignant, lovely book I truly enjoyed to read.

Kelly Harms’ previous works are at my MOUNT TBR forever and this book encouraged me to read them ASAP.

Special thanks to NetGalley and Lake Union Publishing for sharing this promising ARC in exchange my honest review.

2.5 stars
I read The Overdue Life of Amy Byler and I loved the book! Unfortunately this one I didn't like so much. I found it to be much darker than her first novel. This book delved into the world of social media, how it affects our self-esteem, our quality of life (thinking everything has to be perfect!), and our mental health. Going dark is the best idea for everyone - unplug and enjoy life and always remember not everyone's life is perfect as it is online. Unfortunately there were many characters to keep track of during this book, and some scenes were just not believable (the break up text before the wedding?!) Her characters were so infuriating at times and I got frustrated reading it (are you really that dumb? I kept thinking to myself). Overall it was OK.

Thanks #netgalley for the ARC.
#thebrightsideofgoingdark

The Bright Side of Going Dark is such a fun way to explore our society's dependency on technology and social media. This book follows two main characters, Paige and Mia. Mia is a social media influencer whose whole life revolves around being present and active on her Pictey account (similar to Instagram). Paige on the other hand tries her best to remain under the radar by working for Pictey and screening anything that has been flagged inappropriate (comments, posts, etc.). When Mia's wedding is cancelled and Paige's sister attempts suicide, both women are thrown into lives they never thought they'd live.

One of my favorite things about this book was the subtle shift from Mia being a social media influencer to Paige taking over her account. At the beginning of each chapter, we would see a post written by Mia. But as Mia began to be offline more often and Paige began to run her account, those posts would then transfer over to Paige's chapters. I thought it was a subtle yet smart move to indicate to the reader who was living online and who was living offline.

I also really enjoyed the shift in Mia becoming more comfortable in living her life without her phone. I thought the author did a really nice job of showing the reader how much of job being a social media influencer is as well as the other reasons why Mia thought she needed her phone (banking apps, GPS, the internet), but then also showing how much we don't actually need our phone to survive in this world. We see Mia start off completely dependent on her phone, to struggling with technology withdrawals, to accepting her lack of access to her phone, and finally being at peace with not being connected all the time. The change in Mia felt very natural and progressive and extremely relate-able to what many people are experiencing today.

On the flip side, it was really interesting to see Paige's shift from not using social media to becoming addicted to it. The author did a really nice job of showing how easy it is to become addicted to receiving "likes" on photos and reading comments from people who idolize you, and how quickly you keep wanting more. she never directly compared it to drugs, but the way she showed Paige getting more and more involved with Mia's account was very similar to someone getting addicted to drugs. There are the highs where it feels great (lots of likes and positive comments), but when things begin to slow down you (trolls positing negative comments) then you begin to search to get an even better high. (positing a better photo to get more likes and positive comments).

This book is so much more than technology addiction though. It hits on topics like loss of an animal, depression, suicide, and being true to yourself. I loved how the different themes were intertwined throughout the book so that no one theme outshone the other but instead worked congruently with each other.

My only complaint is that the story got a little slow and repetitive at times. Towards the middle of the book, the story felt like it dragged a little with Mia accepting her life without her phone and Paige embracing her life as the person behind Mia's Pictey account. I felt like the story was moving forward, but we were also being given the same information over and over again. This may just be a personal thing though, and I may not have been in the best mindset for reading when I was reading these parts. I think many people will enjoy this book as a whole and find it very well paced.

Overall, I thought this was an extremely cute book that hit home with a variety of topics. It is full of enjoyable characters who are easy to relate to and have well written character arcs. The side characters shone just as much as the main characters and made this story even more enjoyable to read.

Mia Bell is a social influencer, with 25K followers on Pictey, a social media platform similar to Instagram. Paige Miller is a Safety and Standards monitor at Pictey. Her job is to flag questionable posts and “zap” comments deemed socially unacceptable, hurtful, or dangerous. It is also up to Paige and her colleagues in safety and security, to flag posts that could indicate suicidal ideation. At the end of each day, Paige has to complete a mental health evaluation checklist. One day, Paige finds herself on mandatory “rest” leave (secondary to work related stress) ... and around the same time, Mia’s Pictey account goes “dark” ...

This book constantly had me thinking about so many different aspects of social media. Why do people post on social media? How much screen time is too much? What do people on social platforms expect from their followers? What do followers expect from celebrity influencers? These are some of the issues Mia, Paige and the other characters in the book confront, and that many of us confront. Despite having thousands of followers, the life of internet celebrities can still be lonely (how sad 😢). While I may have made the book sound “serious”, it’s never depressing. It’s the opposite, full of optimism and wise words of advice! Even the title, tells you, there’ is “a BRIGHT side to going dark” ! 😊 I strongly recommend this book. I loved reading it! Thank you #netgalley for the e-ARC. #5⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ @kelly.harms @lakeunionauthors #nomophobia #darnyarnbarn #suicide #polymath #thebrightsideofgoingdark
Of Celebrity Mia Paige, Jessica says: “All she creates is hope and optimism. Hope, optimism and a good living selling fancy yoga pants.”

The Bright Side of Going Dark
by Kelly Harms

I enjoyed this book. The beginning was a little confusing to me, as I did not know what am "influencer" was. I guess I'm old! But once I got into the book, I really liked it. I was pleased with the ending. I have read all of Kelly's books & I like her writing style & characters & plots.

I went into this book thinking it would be lighthearted and fun. It was so much more than that. What a great commentary on today’s society and the effects of social media. I liked the behind the scenes look at influencer culture and the role it can play for both good and bad. I found the characters to be very likable and relatable. This book is well written and I enjoyed the bit of a love story thrown in. Altogether a great read that was well worth my time.

I wasn't wowed by this book, but that said it is a good read. It provides some much needed talking points, particularly around mental health and the influence of social media. I found Mia's parts flowed more easily and were ultimately more interesting. Paige's parts were sometimes flat and I skipped over some of her introspection. It was clever the way the paths of Mia, Page, Tucker and Jessica all met up. As a dog owner I also appreciated the way some time was spent on Mia's grief for her dog. It wasn't dismissed and was dealt with sensitively. Mia's relationship with her mother was also written well. There's a lot here, and a lot to like at that. Whilst I can't quite give it five stars, I can highly recommend it.

With thanks to NetGalley for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

A fun jab at how technology has taken over our lives and how you can never fully avoid digital life. This was a quick read and I enjoyed the alternating POVs of Mia, a famous content creator who lives by her phone and Paige, who works at a social media company. Things are not always what it seems on the monitor/screen! I found this story relevant with the prevalence of the internet but also lighthearted and easy to read. Loved the message - get off your devices and smell the 'real' roses!

Thank you to NetGalley for giving me an advanced copy in exchange for an honest review.

This is my first time reading a book by Kelly Harms and it didn’t disappoint. The Bright Side of Going Dark essentially follows Mia (social media influencer) and Paige (employee at social media platform Pictey) and their journeys navigating social media, family and love. It’s a fun, easy read with some great character development. The plot focuses on Mia, who has gotten a bit caught up in the world of social media, and what that means for those around her.

Would definitely recommend this book!

Love everything that Kelly Harms writes!! And loved this book! Perfect introspection into our modern lives, what we give up in the name of progress, and how to find balance.

Thank you NetGalley and Lake Union Publishing for my first ever ARC :) I was excited to be selected as I had just read The Overdue Life of Amy Byler a month prior and really enjoyed it.

This book was so refreshing and different from anything that is out there right now I think. The book follows Mia, a social media influencer, Jessica, the influenced, and Jessica's older sister Paige, who thinks social media is ridiculous but ironically works for one of the platforms. I loved Mia's perspective because it showed that the grass isn't greener, it's just filtered. The story also touched on how social media can make someone who is struggling feel even more isolated because they think these influencers are out there leading perfect lives. There are pros and cons to social media and I think this book shows that with a great story and likeable characters. I found myself rooting for all of them. I also find myself wishing I had a dog :)

Thank you @netgalley and #lakeunionpublishing for the #arc of @kelly.harms upcoming book #thebrightsideofgoingdark
I am a new fan of Kelly’s after reading #theoverduelifeofamybyler on #kindleunlimited. I was so excited to receive the opportunity to read this book for an honest review.
I really enjoyed reading about Paige, Mia & Jessica. The reminder that everything that you read online isn’t always the truth and there is a stronger personal connection out there is priceless. Kelly’s characters are flawed, lovable, real and also infuriating at times. All those things make the book great, in my opinion! I highly recommend reading this book! I hope you will love it as much as I do.
#netgalley #februaryreads #socialmediabooks #popsugarreadingchallenge #bookstagram #bookish