Follow Me By Angela Clarke

[amazon_link id=”0008165432″ target=”_blank” ][/amazon_link]’Follow Me’ is Angela Clarke’s debut novel and it’s a cracking thriller about the current trend and obsession that is social media.

The ‘Hashtag Murderer’ posts chilling cryptic clues online, pointing to their next target. Taunting the police. Enthralling the press. Capturing the public’s imagination. But this is no virtual threat. As the number of his followers rises, so does the body count. Eight years ago two young girls did something unforgivable. Now ambitious police officer Nasreen and investigative journalist Freddie are thrown together again in a desperate struggle to catch this cunning, fame-crazed killer. But can they stay one step ahead of him? And can they outrun their own past? Time’s running out. Everyone is following the #murderer. But what if he is following you?

The story is written in the third person and is seen solely through the eyes of Freddie, a young upcoming journalist who is always looking for the big scoop, but fortune is in her favour when she stumbles upon a crime scene and finds herself pretending to be a police officer and sees the first victim of the Hashtag Murderer. Obsessed with social media and savvy with the lingo, Freddie finds herself on the police team hunting down the murderer as the body count and the Hashtag Murderer’s followers rise and the clues become more cryptic and they hire Freddie as their Social Media Expert.

I really enjoyed this book and for the first time in a long while, this was a book that genuinely unsettled me and for two nights straight, had me out of my bed pacing the room. The story reminded me of a film, I saw from a number of years ago called ‘Untraceable’ where live videos were posted online and the more views the website got, the more sinister the videos became resulting in the death of people and animals.

The topic of the story is really current and highlights just how much people can get away with on social media and how obsessed we are as generation of wanting to share every single nugget of our every day life and how nothing is private anymore. The story is written in a short and snappy manner, with factual information, the definitions of everyday sayings that we all wonder about but are too ashamed to ask and just how sinister social media has become with trolling.

The main characters in the book are quite interesting, Freddie is a strong willed and determined young woman, clever with a bolshy attitude and she regularly made me snigger with her behaviour whilst Nasreen is a quiet police woman, who is always thinking and eager to please her boss. The two women have a hidden history together that neither of them want to be revealed and this revelation gave the story another unexpected twist.

A fast paced book that leaves you gagging for more, ‘Follow Me’ is a deliciously scary story that will have you looking at people in a whole new light, be very afraid!

You can buy [amazon_link id=”0008165432″ target=”_blank” ]Follow Me from Amazon [/amazon_link] and is available to buy from good bookshops.