I Will Follow

January 1, 2024
Making TikTok videos has never been more dangerous. Nora Monahan is an introspective teen living in her father's bunker in rural Washington state, following his strict rules as he prepares for "a new apocalypse." Nora's only solace is Shea Davison's TikTok channel; along with over 900,000 other followers, Nora watches Shea dance and share videos about her life. But Shea, who radiates positivity online, faces challenges that she doesn't post to TikTok, including trying to salvage a rocky relationship with best friend turned future stepsibling Delancey Renard, who uses they/them pronouns. Nora's obvious obsession with Shea's channel escalates, and when she learns that Shea will be making an appearance at the Washington State Fair, she hatches a plan that culminates in a kidnapping, which Nora frames as a "partnership" that will help her "learn from an expert--my idol" while offering the influencer "something fresh" for her channel. The only person able to save Shea is the one she's been most afraid of losing. Delancey, with help from Shea's dance friends, will need to convince the authorities that Shea's life is really at stake. This suspenseful page-turner is narrated in turns by Nora, Shea, and Delancey, who are minimally described and racially ambiguous. Fans of Natasha Preston will enjoy the twisty plot. Some use of ableist terms hints at possible mental illness that is not explored in the story. A high-stakes thriller exploring the dark depths of online obsession. (Thriller. 14-18)

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February 15, 2024
Grades 8-11 Teenage dancer Shea Davison is a TikTok sensation, with hundreds of thousands of followers regularly tuning in to watch her videos. Nora is Shea's number-one fan, an OG subscriber . . . and Shea's kidnapper. After obsessively watching Shea's videos for over a year, Nora knows everything about her and knows that for Shea's dancing to truly thrive, she needs a collaborator. When she drugs Shea and spirits her off to an isolated cabin in the foothills of Mount Rainier, she's positive that it's only a matter of time before Shea realizes that the two of them are destined to be best friends and creative partners, making viral TikTok dance videos together. But the internet isn't the same as reality, and Shea isn't quite as cooperative as Nora imagined. Alternating between Nora's and Shea's points of view and partially told through social-media notifications, Corrigan's latest thriller is a terrifyingly realistic close-up of fandom, obsession, technology, and an internet culture where viewers think they own content creators.

COPYRIGHT(2024) Booklist, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

May 17, 2024

Gr 7-10-Shea Davison has almost a million followers on TikTok, and she's always been very open and honest about her life on her account. In fact, she might have been a bit too honest, as one of her fans has tracked her down and abducted her, under the guise of helping her improve her channel. Nora, one of Shea's first and most fervent followers, is absolutely certain that the two are best friends and the perfect collaborators, but when her plan to abscond with Shea to her father's remote mountain cabin doesn't work out quite as she'd planned, how will she react? And can Shea leave clues to her kidnapping without tipping Nora off? Billed as Misery for the TikTok generation, this book doesn't quite live up to that hype. The multiple perspectives are a nice touch that let readers into both Shea and Nora's minds, but the rapid and somewhat ambiguous conclusion leaves much to be desired, and the pacing sometimes feels uneven. Nonetheless, fans of April Henry and Natasha Preston will be thrilled by this, and aside from the exciting plot, the novel has a lot to say about internet safety and privacy. Nora can be delightfully creepy and thoroughly chilling, and the moments that show Delancey and Shea's other friends trying to figure out clues to their friend's location are well-paced and exciting. VERDICT Sure to be popular among middle school readers looking for a quick thrill.-Chelsey Masterson

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