My Amazon and Goodreads review of Fake Accounts (Rating 2) – False Hype for a Worthless Recounting. The nameless narrator in Lauren Oyler’s Fake Accounts comments, “I can’t help but feel the books of collected tweets you occasionally see displayed on tables at Urban Outfitters would be better as novels or memoirs that contain no tweets.” Oyler should have taken her protagonist’s advice. The fake accounts in this book — her boyfriend’s conspiracy blog, the outlandish profiles the narrator creates on dating apps, her rambling observations about life — don’t attain novel or memoir status. Noteworthy characters and a memorable story are absent, while the social media posts lack originality and insight. I offer this judgment not only as a disappointed reader, but also as a conscientious writer (see my Amazon author page and Goodreads author page). The raves for Fake Accounts strike me as “false” hype for a worthless “recounting.” Reading it was akin to wasted hours scrolling online.
