Book Review: Follow Her
Follow Her by Anna Strothard is an eerie, mesmerizing read, about a young woman wracked with anxiety who finds a sense of peace and belonging when she meets Frida Rae, a spiritual leader, set on an atmospheric island off the coast of Essex, England. Readers who enjoyed The Girls by Emma Cline will find Follow Her to be an intriguing read.
Seventeen-year-old Katie is highly anxious, lonely, and existentially bored. She is addicted to pills and disconnected from her family, working at a social media company by day and learning to code at night. She has no friends and feels left behind. Then Katie opens an ad for a ethereal teenage girl giving psychic readings on a website called AuraLine. And that is how she enters Frida’s orbit. Katie doesn’t know that by making a new friend, she’ll become involved in a cult. Frida invites her to the “island.”
Dual Timeline
The story is told in present day, when Katie is married, a mom with two kids. A journalist reaches out to her in an intimidating way, showing her photos of Katie and Frida with two missing young women, Ava and Grace. Ava and Grace’s bodies have been found. Throughout the book, Katie looks back on the intense five-month time period in which she lived with Frida and her friends on the island, mostly cut off from the outside world, as it turned from a meditation retreat to a sketchy cult.
An Isolated Island…
On the island, their days are filled with meditation, swimming, walks in the forest, and eating healthy food. Frida helps Katie overcome her addiction to benzos and it seems Katie’s panic attacks calm for a while, even if Frida’s methods were manipulative. Katie is deeply in Frida’s thrall and they fall in love.
Yet Katie has doubts about Frida’s connections to the spiritual world and her claims of being a psychic. More information about Frida’s past is revealed, all while the number of “visitors” and “clients” grows. The place feels more cult-like as they begin to take donations, fear questioning Frida, and become cut off from society even more.
Building a Social Media Empire
Ultimately, Katie was the creator of the Frida Rae social media brand, because she started the account, filming Frida’s “speeches” and interactions with “clients,” researched clients, and shared information with Frida, while also doing the logistics that can make a social media account take off, such as liking, tagging, knowing when to livestream, who to follow, and what to post.
My Thoughts
Some of the reviews I read mentioned the book is slow or there was not enough plot. In my opinion, this was a case of having unclear expectations about the novel. Some sources mentioned that Follow Her is a psychological thriller, but if you go in expecting a slower pace, rather than a thriller, with a strong, atmospheric setting and focus on character development and the subtle interplay of power and belief, then you will be more satisfied with this novel.
I felt mesmerized while reading, like I was truly spending time in that setting, the isolated island in the marshlands where the river meets the sea, in a cottage with daily meditation, full of lost teens and runaways. Overall, I think the novel might be considered literary suspense.
Thank you to Amazon Publishing UK and Lake Union Publishing and NetGalley for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.
