Paige yearns to be liked, in person, sure, but especially on social media. How can there be meaning to your life if not enough people acknowledge it and tell you so for all the world to see? Or at least that is what Paige believes. Now she has a job working with one of her most favorite social media influencers and the girl’s boyfriend. Along the way, Paige is introduced to an organization that makes your dreams a reality…but not really. Vicarious Vacations manufactures ‘likes’ and increases a person’s social media influence artificially. And now Paige is hooked. She has everything that she has always wanted, but at what price? The grass is not always greener on the other side, and everything is not always what it seems to be. Sometimes the price you are asked to pay is just too high. I loved this book! It tackles a relevant subject in our society today. The addiction to social media and the race to be a social influencer and gather the most likes is real, as well as believing everything you see is the real deal. Thank you to NetGalley, the author and publisher for the opportunity to review this book!

I received an e-arc from NetGalley and Black Rose Writing in exchange for an honest review.

I couldn't put this down, and read it in three days. It's the story of Paige, an Instagram addict who, through various somewhat shady methods, becomes an influencer. It reminded me quite strongly of Dave Eggers The Circle. They cover similar themes and both can be a bit soup-boxy and cardboardy. Both feature naïve protagonists and cover the themes of privacy and social media.  Vicarious Vacations was written eight years alter and you can really see the progress / havoc / infringement on our time and privacy that social media has made in that time. Unlike the Eggers book, this focussed a bit more on the personal rather than the systematic, particularly in the final 20 percent. I enjoyed the way, even though some details were invented (or rather, having done the maths, the book is probably set about five years in our future) he uses the real names of the social media companies. I once quit a Candace Bushnell novel because she kept referring to "Instaphoto". This book had a level of authenticity, even if the ending was maybe a little too tidy.  I'm very glad I stumbled across Michael Wojciechowskin, and will be looking up his back catalogue.

Actual rating 3.5/5 stars.

Paige yearns for the influencer lifestyle but feels she is just too average to ever attain more than her usual ten likes per Instagram post. This is where Vicarious Vacations can prove her wrong. VV are a company designed to provide individuals with fake holidays and faker photos to share. There is no need to actually journey half way across the world or bake under the hot sun for the perfect beach selfie when a company can manufacture all of it for you. For Paige, this is only the start of her bid for social media stardom.

Paige's social media obsession was very real and a surprisingly sorrowful thing to witness. She judged her self-worth through likes and comments and when they didn’t measure up to what others were receiving she felt this on a personal level, as though she was the one not worthy of attention rather than a meaningless photo or status. I understand that there are so many social media users who share these same thoughts and feelings, which is just awful to consider, and even worse are the many companies who benefit from this. It was both harrowing and insightful to see the thought process of one so indoctrinated by the belief in social media's greatness and whose self-esteem and happiness was so closely tied up with it.

Whilst I really appreciated these insights, as well as the understanding this provided on the modern-day issues of technological dependence and the addictive highs garnered from meaningless online interaction, I did find some initial issues with Paige's character, as she remained naïve to the truth in some highly unbelievable ways. For example, in some early interactions Paige acted entirely blind to suggestions that likes meant nothing and also stated, to the boss of her new job, that a photo of him changing her car tyre would be worth at least a hundred likes and was deeply shocked that he failed to understand the importance of it and disallowed the photo of him to be shared. Before this she had also declared herself friends with his wife and stated all the platforms she had followed and befriended her on, with some considerable pride, during her job interview. I understand how an obsession with likes can form and how these platforms are designed to become addictions, but are there really adults out there who so deeply believe that likes are truly meaningful and are baffled by those who think alternatively? She also proved painfully tactless on many subsequent occasions, but as she grew so too did her realisation about what a prison her phone screen had become.

Paige's social media addiction was formed primarily around the online presence of Alexis, who owned a large social media following and was also her boss’ wife, as mentioned above. Alexis felt very much like a two-dimensional mean girl and I disliked seeing the two women pitting themselves against one another. A truly shocking event occurred around a third of the way into this novel that altered my perception of her character and the trajectory of this book.

I flew through the remainder of the pages, from this point, and whilst it did take a somewhat guessable trajectory the end portion was full of twists that I greatly appreciated and ensured that this book ended on a high note, for me.

Earlier this month, I read People Like Her, which also focused on the influencer lifestyle. I don’t mention this book to compare the two, merely to note how interesting it was that this book focused on the emulation of flawlessness, based upon the creation of an ‘aspirational’ Instagram feed, and my former read, which represented those who calculated their construction of chaos and aimed at crafting authenticity. These books seem to note that two types of influencers exist - those you long to emulate and those you feel you can relate to. Neither, however, is real. This is definitely something to be aware of when interacting online and I am here for all the books, available in every genre, that focus on the still relatively new world of social media fame, and featuring both the varied negatives and positives about it.