Good, descriptive writing that made the book enjoyable to read even when the plot slowed to a crawl. Stein obviously knows the Internet, and it's always a delight when an author writing about the Internet /gets it/. That being said, the ending felt rushed. I wish there were some bigger consequences or higher stakes. I don't feel like we (the reader) care enough about the Becca mystery by the end of the novel.

Thank you to Net Galley for the advanced reader copy!

This was well-written, but I feel like maybe I didn't totally 'get it'. I liked the premise a lot, and thought the beginning was super strong. Creepy house, mystery, random group of people living there. However, there was very little atmosphere in the book. I never felt like anything creepy was happening, or got that gothic mystery feel. The characters were all just okay. I didn't feel like we ever pursued the mystery of Becca - everything that happens just happens without any action from the characters and with no tension. I would have liked a lot more emphasis on the characters and Becca's disappearance, and less on influencing brand deals. That said, I found this well-written (love the writing style) and read it within 2 days, so definitely an interesting read.

Thank you to Ballantine and NetGalley for the ARC.

This book could have been taken as an instructional on how to become an influencer. However to me it was more about the secrets people keep and the effect those secrets have on others. Set in an atmospheric house where everyone is always performing and no one really shares who they are, alliances form. But those alliances are tenuous at best leading to the ultimate destruction of what they have built and are working toward.

I received an arc of this book and voluntarily provided a review.

Thanks to Net Galley and Ballantine for the ARC copy of this novel in exchange for an honest opinion. I wish the opinion were more favorable, but not being a member of the millenial genration, so much about influencers and life on social media was not for me.

It starts of interestingly enough, with Dayna and her pet rabbit, Owen Wilson, following her moving van to move in with her boyfriend. At the same time, she gets a text from a friend that said boyfriend posted on Reddit that he did not want her moving in with him. Desperation! Dayna is forced to contact Craig, a man she met 20 years ago, who lives in LA in a falling-down mansion where she had her first and only photography exhibit.

Once there, we meet Olivia, a young woman actress wannabe who feels guilt over her parents' death and other assorted inhabitants of Craig's Hype House. (First I heard this term.) If you know what that is as well as the incomes and work that influencers do, this may be just the read for you. There is a mys tery involving Becca, a missing Tarot card reader and much about rabbits' habits as pets. For my taste, it was a bare three stars.

I found the ending a bit rushed, and some of the prose just wasn't for me, but I do like the overall concept and the contemporary focus of this book.

Full Disclosure: I received an Advanced Reader's Copy of If You're Seeing This, It's Meant for You by Leigh Stein from Ballantine Books via NetGalley. It will be out around August 26, 2025.

With a title like If You're Seeing This, It's Meant for You, Leigh Stein has already got you hooked. I mean, could it be any clearer that you need to read this? I was also drawn into descriptions of a Gothic, potentially haunted mansion and tarot card readings. Yes, please! The mystery surrounds what happened to the very popular tarot card reader living in the hype house when she suddenly disappears. A new member of the house is determined to find out. The machine behind Internet celebrity is also quite fascinating to read about. This might be fiction but that part seems based in a decent amount of reality. And while I don't spend much time on social media, I probably would get sucked into a series of videos that offered up a mystery. And if a random video popped up on my feed that was titled If You're Seeing This, It's Meant for You, I just might watch it. If you are reading this, you are meant to read this book.

Modern, weird and has a really charming sense of humor.

Influencers are often called frivolous and shallow, but this story does an amazing job portraying the very real social capital and incredible money they make marketing products and even just being present for people.

I liked that the author took some liberties creating fictional songs or cultural references instead of just name dropping.

I kept googling things with no result because I couldn’t tell what was a real life reference and what was fictional.

There were quite a few twists and the one at the end started to piss me off with the direction it went but the reference back to the portrait in Morgan’s room was very intriguing.
When the big reveal happened, I assumed there wasn’t any kind of supernatural element to the story but now I’m questioning a lot…..


Thank you NetGalley and Ballantine for the A.R.C.!

Leigh Stein’s novel If You’re Seeing This, It’s Meant for You is a smart and engrossing story that frightens on two levels. On the surface, it’s a gothic novel about a missing girl and a creepy house with unsettling characters to match. But the real horrors are the lives of the social media influencers who live and work there, who have so curated their lives that the line between what’s real and what’s fabricated is fuzzier than any ghost gliding down a hallway.

Stein mentions in her acknowledgements that she drew inspiration from Emily Stone’s lecture on the novel Rebecca, specifically Stone’s comments on the difficult nature of confining a contemporary gothic heroine to one location. Stein skillfully turns this problem into one of the features of the novel, using social media platforms to both literally and figuratively confine her characters to a house–and a life–that haunts them. As one character notes, “To feel alive, I had to hurt. The platform was less like a stage for a one-woman show and more like a gladiator arena where spectators came to watch the bloody extreme.” The real boogey-man here is no one person, but the social media platforms whose “algorithm was ravenous.” While Stein’s characters themselves are all flawed, frustrating, and at times downright unlovable, can the reader fault them entirely? Although the ending of the story offers resolutions to the plot (if you want to accept them), it leaves the reader with questions not only about the fate of the characters, but the fate of anyone who sells her soul to the social media gods.

Overall, I found this novel entertaining, funny, and thought-provoking. Admittedly, I'm a millennial that doesn't invest a lot in social media, so Stein's critiques resonated with me. I can't help but wonder what a younger reader might think of it, and I wouldn't be surprised if they had more to say, especially about the younger characters in the novel.

Thank you NetGalley and Ballantine Books for an ARC of this title and the opportunity to provide an honest review.

First, I was really intrigued by the premise of this book — it felt fresh and totally relevant to the world of social media and Tik Tok. The concept had so much potential, and I was excited to see how it would all play out. Unfortunately, the execution just didn't land for me. I'm all for a weird lit book (Mona Awad or Ottessa Moshfegh), but there's a lot about his one that I just didn't get it.

The influencers all had their "thing" and I could see them all as characters on my FYP until Olivia was introduced as the orphan and dressed up for a video within 10 minutes of walking in the door. Maybe it's because I had the storybook orphan image in my head when reading this but I just couldn't relate it to something I would actually see on social media.

Owen Wilson, the rabbit, was random. It felt like a nod to other weird lit books but also felt like it was tossed into the story for the sake of including a rabbit because rabbits are...weird? The idea that these influencers are crying and fighting over making videos with a rabbit didn't make sense to me. It tied together at the end, but if Owen Wilson had a more significant role or impacted the trajectory of the story, I could understand the inclusion of the rabbit more.

The tarot cards were a really cool idea as a background for Becca but there was a huge gap when tying the idea of the cards with the history of the house. It felt thrown together and came at you fast at the end of the book. I would've loved to see more hints at this earlier on.
The romance (if you could call it that) was unnecessary and made Dayna an unlikeable character in the end.

Each of these elements could have worked in theory, but together they felt scattered and disconnected rather than quirky or clever and the dialogue was really hit or miss. In the end I found myself pulled out of the story more than I was drawn into it. That's not to say that this book couldn't work for someone else. Especially someone looking for a unique book with pop culture references and chaotic energy. But, it wasn't quite the right fit for me.

I was really torn between 4 and 5 stars on this one, but settled on 4 because my biggest problem with the book (the tension and resolution of the mystery were underwhelming to me) was a major aspect of the plot and of the book’s marketing. That said, I *really* enjoyed reading this and would highly recommend it, since there’s so much else to love here. The gothic atmosphere and the old LA mansion setting were really well-done. The writing is excellent, full of original and offbeat description and deadpan humor. The satire is pitch-perfect, and the author really nails the tone of the Reddit post that kicks off the book as well as the TikTok content the characters create. Still, the book also manages to read like a love letter to TikTok and Gen Z, and the satire is tempered with what feels like a genuine understanding of how hard it is to grow up in an online world that no longer allows anonymous and (relatively) safe exploration of your identity, but instead incentivizes or outright demands oversharing and self-exploitation. There’s a lot of thought-provoking stuff here about the difference between “art” and “content,” the pain of aging and feeling a loss of relevance and future possibility, and parent-child relationships.

This was a tremendously fun book, and a quick read. I enjoyed the modern take on a gothic novel, and felt the author did a nice job of hitting classic gothic beats. The decaying house. The man who isn't telling the whole truth. The hint of the paranormal. Even the conflagration at the end.

I spent the whole book worried something bad would happen to the rabbit, and am pleased to report the rabbit is unharmed.

Of the two points of view, I thought the Millennial character was fleshed out more fully, but I liked the Gen-Z character more. The Millennial felt a little exhausting, and I could see why the boyfriend who dumped her decided he didn't want to live with her full time. I wouldn't either, and I wasn't incredibly sympathetic to her frustrated artist past or the way her 'journalism' job was eroding. In many ways, she felt whiny to me. I think we could have spent more time delving into the backgrounds of the content creators and contrasting their youth and hopefulness with the artistic and professional stall-out of the Millennial. I think the book brushed over this, but there was a lot more depth that could have been explored and wasn't.

As a side note, I found the mention of the pandemic jarring. Odd how I still very much prefer to not acknowledge that ever happened. This is almost certainly a 'me' thing.

In the end, I also thought the paranormal plot thread was unclear. On the one hand, the girl was very cleary having a breakdown. On the other, we are shown in the chapter that is in her point of view that she does have some psychic abilities going on. But, the other characters respond to her, in the final moments, solely as if she is having a mental health crisis and it left the takeaway muddled. Was the reader meant to think she had psychic abilities or that she was in a crisis? Did the other characters believe she had psychic abilities at the end, or had their belief in her been erased by her mental breakdown? There was a lot there to play with, and I thought the text left it all on the table.

All of that said, I recommend this to anyone who wants a fun gothic read that takes the classical elements of the genre and transports them to a modern setting.

The author mentions du Maurier’s Rebecca as an inspiration for this novel, so it is both a classic, timeless Gothic novel, and a very modern one. After being dumped via Reddit, Dayna moves into a dilapidated mansion where she spent a night when she was younger. She’s there as a mother hen to a group of younger influencers who live in a “hype house.” They “create content” for a platform (read TikTok), learning ways to trick the algorithm into turning them into stars. She soon learns that one of them, Becca the tarot reader, went missing and they’re still trying to find their footing. A new influencer, Olivia the Orphan, is a new addition to the house, as well as the other POV character. She tells the story through the eyes of a young person, while Dayna narrates it through the filter of her almost forty years on earth. The influencers speak another language that I couldn’t even hope to follow. And I was shocked that the “old person” here was a Millennial! So it was interesting in that regard, to see how these kids think and feel and the different “languages” that both generations speak and how these young people see the pop culture of their elders. The dialogues really help make this clear. There is also Owen Wilson. No, not the actor but a rabbit. He’s important to the plot and he’s adorable. The plot was dark and intriguing. The final part was a little too easy for me, but the ending was satisfying.
I chose to read this book and all opinions in this review are my own and completely unbiased. Thank you, NetGalley/Ballantine.

4.75

setting: California
rep: n/a

an odd and totally engrossing book! I went into it blind, pretty much, because it's been so long since I requested it on netgalley that I had no memory of the plot, and it ended up as such a win! really got on with the writing style and the oddness of the plot (the whole concept of a hype house is so strange but I was so hooked)

Thank you to the publisher for sending this my way. I found it so engaging and entertaining and telling of the way influencer culture impacts all generations in different ways. I don’t know much about hype houses, and at first, I was worried this was going to feel a little dated, as trends are so fleeting in our culture, but I enjoyed the writing and storytelling, and the creepy vibes of the house unsettled me. Well done, Leigh.

As I’ve said in many of my reviews, I love picking books based on their covers—and it rarely steers me wrong. I went into this one completely blind, drawn in solely by the cover (pink + bunny = usually a 5-star read for me), and the fact that I’ve had Leigh Stein’s Self Care on my TBR for a while.

As a millennial who’s admittedly chronically online, this book had me dialed in. It ticked all my boxes: biting satire, hype house absurdity, an artsy millennial in the midst of a midlife crisis stuck in a terrible marketing job, a cute animal with a ridiculous name, tarot readings, and a spooky mansion backdrop. (In my mind, it was the John Sowden House—right?)

I really enjoyed the dual POVs between Dayna and Olivia. The story blends satire, mystery, and a dash of true crime. I never quite knew where it was headed, but I didn’t care—I was fully along for the ride. This one is perfect for the weird literature girlies. They’re going to eat it up. And that ending? Still not over it.

Self Care is officially moving up my TBR list.

Huge thanks to NetGalley and Ballantine for the early copy—I couldn’t put it down!

Thank you to NetGalley and Ballantine Books for the opportunity to read this book!

Wow! While Stein's previous novel, Self Care, didn't really hit the spot for me, this one really transcended the shallow-ness of the culture it is skewering and provided a balance that I found lacking in Self Care. If You're Seeing This was a thrill to read and I found myself thinking about it frequently whenever I wasn't reading.

BOOK REPORT
Received a complimentary copy of If You're Seeing This, It's Meant for You, by Leigh Stein, from Ballantine | Ballantine Books/NetGalley, for which I am appreciative, in exchange for a fair and honest review. Scroll past the BOOK REPORT section for a cut-and-paste of the DESCRIPTION of it from them if you want to read my thoughts on the book in the context of that summary.

Whoa!

That was a meta-meta experience, if I’ve ever had one.

How to explain…..

Well, first of all, this was a hell of a lot better book than the last one I read about a bunch of influencers/personalities all living together in one house. Every character seemed like they could be a real person. By the same token, most of them also felt like they could’ve come right out of a Hammer Film Productions British schlock horror movie from the 1960s or early ‘70s, even though this book was set in Los Angeles. (Which, weirdly for me, I did not loathe in this book. I guess because it really didn’t play much of a role, thank heavens.) For those who haven’t heard me sing this song, I love, love, love me some well-done schlock horror, so that’s a compliment.

I will continue to show my age here by saying that I could completely seeing George Hamilton circa 1990 playing the role of Craig in a screen version of this. And that I wish the bunny had been named Owen Meany instead of Owen Wilson, because Oh My God In Heaven you cannot even begin to imagine how much I loathe Owen Wilson. (Well, to be fair to him, not as much as I loathe the state of Alabama’s current attorney general, who has announced his intent to run for the U.S. Senate. And not for the same reasons. The actor just saps my will to live. The AG is evil incarnate.)

Ummm. Ahem. Owen Meany. As in, A Prayer for…..by John Irving. Five stars, still one of my all-time favorite books.

Focus, Kristi, focus…..

Short version: Leigh Stein is all that and a bag of chips, and I need to read more by her. Even though, verily, it pains my soul to read a 39-year-old woman being depicted as perceiving of herself/perceived by others to be past her prime. And, back to the meta-meta, this was a house of mirrors experience in SO many ways.

Dearie, dearie me, but how happy am I that the various video platforms weren’t around when I was a teenager/in my early 20s…..

Schafe: If you’re reading this, I would like for you to read this book (in your oh-so-copious spare time) and give me your thoughts on it. Mother/Nancy: I don’t think you’d like it. Lori: I get the feeling your reading might be the same on it as mine.

PS
If this is the first time you’re reading one of my Goodreads posts, please know that all I do is react to books in real time. As in: How did they make me feel/what did they make me think/did they give me a near-migraine headache?

For the most part I do not attempt to weigh them on their literary merit. A great deal of the time I use writing a Book Report as a reason to share some memory or go off on a tangent/multiple tangents that I want to set down on the record for my own peculiar reasons, and/or to entertain certain family members and friends who I know do give this sort of thing their attention, bless their hearts. (In the good way.)

Finally, even if I really can’t stand a book, I always applaud the person who has been able to write one!

Peace in our time, y’all.

Peace in our time.

DESCRIPTION
Fates collide after a tarot influencer disappears from a decaying Hollywood mansion in this unnerving gothic mystery and audacious social comedy from the acclaimed author of Self Care.

After her boyfriend dumps her in a Reddit post, unemployed thirty-nine-year-old Dayna accepts an unusual opportunity from a man she stopped speaking to twenty years ago: If Dayna can help Craig transform his crumbling mansion into a successful hype house of influencers, he can restore his birthright to its former glory, and she can bring her career back from the dead.

But missing from the mansion is Becca, an enigmatic tarot card reader who built a rabid fandom with her cryptic, soul-touching videos . . . and then vanished. With nineteen-year-old Olivia, the newest member of the hype house (and one of Becca’s biggest fans), Dayna begins to build a social media campaign around Becca’s disappearance that will catapult the creators to new heights of success. Too bad Craig forbids Dayna from pursuing the mystery at its heart.

As Olivia searches for traces of Becca in a labyrinthine house that seems intent on hiding its secrets, and Dayna becomes entangled with both Craig and Jake, the resident heartthrob and the last person to see Becca, the two women make a shocking discovery that will upend everything.

The internet: You may think you’re inhabiting it, but is it really inhabiting you?

This book has a lot of topics going on and felt a bet chaotic to me. I think this book should be marketed to Ryan Murphy horror fans. I could see Ryan Murphy adapting this book and people eating it up. My biggest qualm is that I didn’t really care about any of the characters. It’s satire right that the characters are clamoring to film with a bunny named Owen Wilson? I think this book suffers to movies that are about comedy and then this have to feature fake stand up which ends up being really bad. Except in this case it was really bad ideas for tik toks. It was an interesting idea. It was enjoyable to read but it wasn’t really my favorite because I couldn’t figure out exactly what the book was trying to do until the end.

Disgraced entertainment journalist Dayna takes an offer to manage a hype house based in the mysterious LA Deckler house, but when she gets there she finds a mystery surrounding Bella, the missing tarot influencer that left one night without telling anyone why. Needing a hook for a new campaign, she decides to conduct a search for Bella, against the owner’s instruction, and things unravel into the unimaginable.

I was so intrigued by this concept. If you look at my reading, there’s a lot of influencer suspense lately. Sadly, the mystery fell kind of short for me. The story itself wasn’t bad. It held some truth of the pitfalls of influencer fame, stalkers, hiding (and losing in some cases) your true self, etc, and even the skeezy executive types involved in the industry. What was lacking was the actual search for Bella. When it came to that, it was extremely rushed and ended almost immediately. I’d love to see that fleshed out more and some of the relationships developed a little more (cough Dayna and Jake). All in all I enjoyed the read, but was a little let down with the finish.
Thank you to Leigh Stein and Ballantine for the arc so I could provide this review!

This is the second book in a row that I read that uses social media as a foundational plot source. This one takes a slightly broader view of the industry by placing itself in a hype house--a literal house that creators share and make content in, often appearing in each other's videos, reminiscent of the Old Hollywood studio system. A woman who gets dumped via Reddit post makes her way to the house, owned by an old flame, where she has a standing job offer to help wrangle brand deals for the denizens of the house in question. Trauma, grief, loss, and illness hang over the members of the hype house and a mysterious disappearance heightens everyone's experiences. This is a well-paced thriller with plenty to chew on.