Review: Follow Me

Follow Me by Angela Clarke
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I love it when crime fiction gives us a scare through using something everyone is obsessed with – social media. It’s great for that added fear factor, bringing the story to life in the everyday world. A lot of crime fiction uses it in the background, so I was more than willing to dive into a book where the main focus is the social media aspect. Such has happened a handful of times in the past, and I’ve always seemed to enjoy it (Chris Carter did it wonderfully, for example), so I was eager to dive into a series that made it the focal point.

I will be honest, this first book in Angela Clarke’s Social Media Murders series didn’t quite grab me in the way I had hoped it would. I went in with extremely high expectations, I went in expecting my mind to be blown, only to be a bit let down by what I was given. It was certainly an enjoyable read, one I was more than willing to finish across a single day, going so far as to make sure I was able to finish the last couple of chapters before heading to bed, but it wasn’t quite the obsession I had been hoping it would be. It was the kind of book where it had the potential to be much more, where there were times I did consider giving a four-star rating, but in the end it wasn’t quite enough.

With the above being said, I am interested in giving the second book a read. In fact, I have purchased Watch Me – there was such promise with Follow Me that I cannot help but cross my fingers and hope the second book hits harder than this one. Follow Me was an enjoyable book, it just needed that something more – hence why I am willing to try book two.

As I stated, this book uses social media as the focal point of the crimes. It makes great use of social media, makes a really interesting story, and I adored this aspect. It was intriguing and gripping, exactly what I wanted. What lost it for me was the characters – although I was interested in their stories, I didn’t much care for them. I wasn’t sucked into their characters, I could not connect, and this made it difficult to dive deep into the story. I’m hoping now we’ve got to know them a bit, things will improve with book two. I feel as though a lot of time was spent on the development of them, yet we never really got to know them well until towards the end of the book – this has happened a few times in crime series, whereby it takes a while to get to know the main characters, only for the rest of the series to be great, thus my crossed fingers.

Overall, this one wasn’t quite what I had thought it would be but I am going to be giving the second book a read – with my fingers being crossed for a four-star read with book two.

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