Hate Follow by Erin Quinn-Kong
Published October 2024 via William Morrow Paperbacks
★★
Whitney has pulled herself up by the bootstraps—or perhaps by the Instagram reel. Since her husband died a few years ago, she's been paying off bills and raising her four children through #influencing.
The problem: Her oldest child wants out. Whitney can't see a way to pay the bills that doesn't involve putting her children's lives online...but when Mia gets a lawyer, she might have to figure it out.
I've been very curious about this book. It feels so timely: Today's teenagers are growing up with a level of scrutiny and publicity that cannot really be overstated, and there are precious few safeguards in place for children whose parents are making money through that scrutiny. Illinois recently passed a law requiring parents who use their children in paid social media 1) track how much their children appear and 2) compensate them accordingly...but that law has a lot of limits, and it only applies to content made in Illinois, and the provision is not 'if you don't do this, X happens'—the provision is 'if you don't do this, your kid is allowed to sue you. If they want. And if they can find a lawyer on their own. And if they can figure out how to pay legal fees on their own.'
And that's basically it. Social media is basically a Wild West as far as regulation goes—but that won't last forever, and more and more children and teenagers whose parents' livelihood depends on their lives being available for anyone to see and opine on are growing up and realizing that this is not right.
But this book just...didn't do it for me. I didn't love the writing, which felt quite shallow (do we actually know anything about Whitney, beyond her family obligations and her parentified childhood and that she likes to get weekly $400 spa treatments? We don't know anything about her boyfriend except that he's hot and doesn't want either kids or commitments; we don't know much about Mia except that she'd like some privacy, thanks, that she has terrrrrrrible judgement in boys, and a throwaway line about her giving great presents; and Mia's younger siblings are completely devoid of personality) and chockablock full of telling rather than showing (she knew...she felt...). But more than that, I couldn't shake the feeling that the only legal research the author had done was to read My Sister's Keeper, and even then I think half of whatever common sense was in that book went out the window.
Here's how it goes in the Hate Follow: Mia talks to a lawyer, who agrees to take on her case pro bono. He has Whitney served. And then we hear almost nothing from him throughout the rest of the book, because apparently lawyers don't do anything until the case they're working on goes to trial. Meanwhile, Whitney finds a (sexist) lawyer of her own, who gives her a couple of pieces of advice and then...does very little other than tell her to sit back and wait for the trial. The judge agrees that Mia should live with another family for the duration, because it would be a little awkward to live at home while trying to sue your mother.
Now, I'm not a lawyer—so I called my brother, who is. This is not his specialty (and in case I need to say it, he's not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice), but he cheerfully talked me through the many many steps and many many months it would realistically take for a case to get to a point where it was likely to go to court. Starting with: Why is Whitney's lawyer assuming a trial? He should be filing a motion for dismissal, trying to kill this case dead in the water. He and Mia's lawyer should be negotiating, trying to come to an agreement without the involvement of a judge—or, barring that, asking the judge to find in their favor without a trial. They should not be sitting on their pretty (Mia's lawyer) or sexist (Whitney's lawyer) bums and waiting for this trial, which might take years. My brother wasn't sure what would happen with Mia (again, not his specialty), but when Mia's friend's parents say "yes, stay with us as long as you want", do they understand that Mia might be with them until she goes to college...?
Spoilers below:
Here's the thing: The book would be more interesting if Mia's case did go to trial, or if the lawyers did more than jack shit. When Whitney makes a drunken, emotional post about how her daughter is suing her...? I spent the rest of the book waiting for Mia's lawyer to find a way to use that. (At the very least, to point out that Whitney has brought the wrath of thousands of strangers on the Internet down on her kid because she's upset.) Or when Mia makes a social media post...I was waiting for Whitney's smarmy lawyer to try to find a way to use it against Mia. I wanted to know what arguments each lawyer would use in court, and what evidence they'd present—not just offhand mentions in the few meetings they have about how many sponsored posts Mia has been in. If Mia was going to leave home for a while, I wanted more of a reason for that—for example, that her mother is still posting content about her while the case is ongoing. When Mia gives her mother a photograph as a gift, I wanted to know if she worried that her mother would in turn put that on social media to show what a good mom she is. When a creep at a store recognizes Mia from Whitney's social media and hits on her—and then finds her online—I wanted that to come up in the nonexistent trial. Whitney also treats Mia living with friends as a no-contact order (it's not), and it would have dialed up the tension quite a bit if she had been speaking to Mia throughout and realizing just how much she thinks of her daughter as a content horse to flog—or if there had been a no-contact order because Whitney wouldn't quit, and we'd seen Mia's relief at waking up to a day knowing that nothing she did would make it online.
I wanted to like this, and I'll be curious to read books with similar premises in the future—but this was just not what I was hoping for.
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