Joined in 2023 
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63 About this deal
O'Neill has created one of the most delectably dark and unlikeable main characters I have come across in a long time and it was very hard for me to feel sympathy for her and how her life spirals out of control. Although I will say that the truth behind the mystery won’t come as a surprise, it was fun to get to read between the lines and try to see Sam from the outside.
As the trial by social media raises its ugly head, the toxicity starts to spread and Samantha sees the empire she has worked so hard to establish slowly begin to crumble. The underlying critique of modern society, and social media/influencer culture especially, was very on point, sparking a lot of additional questions, thoughts and reflections for me. Both stories have governments that control their subjects through quite literally rewriting history as it suited their changing agendas. I’d also suggest that it totally misses the mark with regards to rape allegations both false and true.Yet she has built her dream house in the mirror image of Sam’s childhood home and named her daughters Martha and Maya – “Her baby names; she’d told Lisa that a million times when they were teenagers,” thinks Sam on meeting the twins. Samantha is shallow, selfish and spiteful and her friend, Lucy, doesn't have any personality to speak of.
The story splits into two timelines as we discover the reality of the events of the past, and watch Samantha trying to control her old friend and maintain her brand.
You don't want to stop reading until you find out how it ends even though it's perfectly obvious from the outset that there won't be any real surprises in this she said she said story. I've lived in this city long enough to know that the only thing these people can't forgive is poverty. And it asks us to consider how two memories of the same event can differ, and how effortlessly we choose which stories to believe.
She’s an oracle, telling them how to live their lives, how to be happy, how to find and honour their ‘truth’.Was this what it meant to be an adult, everyone reframing their childhood experiences to paint themselves as the victim?
They are discussing how Sam can distance herself from Shakti, given the allegations against her, so Shakti can go public. As her world begins to unravel, she flees her life on New York’s Upper West Side and heads for her suburban hometown and tracks down her high-school best friend – the one accusing her. There’s an imbalance of power because those with huge platforms have more power in which to tell a story.Sam’s version of events is often at odds with others, and she has a tendency towards rewriting history as fuel for gaslighting those around her. The essay goes viral but when her best friend Lisa contacts her to say that she remembers things about that night very differently, who is telling the truth? But when word of Anna’s work reaches her enemies, it sets off a cat-and-mouse chase that will lead Ben and Anna halfway across Europe and into the heart of war-torn Syria. Ultimately, to me, this does a huge disservice to everyone who has ever been the victim of sexual violence. At the same time, we can admit that when we as a society do hold women to account, we do so with a vociferousness and viciousness seldom seen for men.
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