Social media in fiction

I haven’t done a book review on here for some time so, whilst thinking it must be time to rectify that, I went looking at my recent reads. In truth, there’ve been few standout fictional reads of late; instead they’ve mostly been light episodes in between the heavier-weight professional reads. However, amongst these were a couple of books where social media paid a surprisingly large part.

The books in question were Her Name was Rose by Claire Allen and Friend Request by Laura Marshall.  Both are dubbed psychological thrillers, both rate 3.5 stars on Goodreads and 4.5 stars on Amazon, so not much to choose between them it would appear.

The first book came recommended by my good friend and also by no less a luminary than Marian Keyes, the second made it’s way onto my Kindle by unknown means – probably via a deal on Book Bub or some such. I rated the first 3 stars (my most common rating) and the second 4 stars as – for me – the suspense was tighter and the outcome less telegraphed.  These being thrillers – I’ll not be writing reviews here, as the review would be relatively meaningless without spoilers.

But what I can say is, in both tales, Facebook is depicted as a tool of deceit. In the first, it’s the more common role of it depicting a perfect life which – in truth – is anything but, whereas in the second, a false profile is created in a bid to extract revenge for actions in the past.

This reminded me of the day, some years ago now, when my mother gave me a lecture about the evils of Facebook despite my being well over 50 at the time! I’d countered by saying it was just a tool, how it was used being down to the individual and for someone old and wise to the ways of the internet, I felt in no danger; I still don’t. But I’m not so foolish that I can’t see how much room there is for mis-use – as ably demonstrated in both these tales.

No doubt I’ll soon be reading a book where Twitter plays a major role, or Instagram, Pinterest, Tumblr et al …

© Debra Carey, 2018