Sometimes if I’m running dry on ideas for what to read, I do find it enjoyable to find inspiration at a local book store. Am I likely to purchase titles I’ve never read before? Not usually. Especially if I’m unfamiliar with other works from an author. But as I was walking the aisles of my local bookstore, the cover of Liann Zhang’s Julie Chan is Dead caught my attention.
It also doesn’t hurt that we share the same name. And that she is a twin. And that the other twin is named after a cat I had for eighteen years. Really, it had a lot going for it. But aside from those factors, the premise was very intriguing. Julie and Chloe are twins, separated at a young age after their parents died in a car accident. Chloe grows up in a very affluent white family, while Julie is raised by her abusive aunt. Julie had always wanted to connect with her sister, who had over the last several years become a rising social media star. They did connect so that Chloe could film herself gifting Julie a house, but then promptly dumped her out of her life.
After that miserable encounter, Julie made it a point not to stalk Chloe’s social media profiles, but one night she gets a call from Chloe who mumbles “I’m sorry” several times before hanging up. In a spur of the moment decision, Julie jets to New York only to find Chloe dead on the floor of her apartment. In the chaos of all that followed, no one batted an eye when Julie mentioned that she herself was Chloe. This is one of the points in the novel that I find a little far fetched. Even if they were identical, I would think some testing would have needed to be done to confirm the identity of the body. But Julie seamlessly slips on Chloe’s bougie life. Having unlimited funds at her fingertips is surreal, but what really sucks her in is all of the adoration from strangers she gets online.
I’m sure we’ve all wished we could be a little famous sometimes. I know I do, but really, I’m sure it is exhausting having to be “on” all the time. Still, enough money could make it worth it in the end. Julie gets lost in her new life, and she readily accepts the odd super influencers that have adopted Julie into their circle. In fact, they like her so much that they invite her, again, to a weeklong social media free retreat on a private island owned by the leader of these social media stars, Bella Marie. This island is weird, and as the details kept emerging, I thought back to last year’s film, Blink. In fact, there is a whole heck of a lot of it that is similar until there is kind of a supernatural element introduced. It’s not really, but these characters believe in it.
I’m not sure how I would have liked Julie to get exposed here, but I wasn’t really satisfied with how she was. I’m sure there is a bigger picture message here, about how social media and money means bad people can get away with anything, but all in all, I didn’t quite make the connection. In any case, I’m glad I gave this one a try.