Review: "So Over Sharing" by Elissa Brent Weissman

So Over Sharing by Elissa Brent Weissman
Published May 2025 via Dial Books
★★★

Hadley is twelve, but she's been online for most of her life—her mother is an influencer, and Hadley's along for the ride...whether she likes it or not. And Willow's mother is only now gaining traction in the mommyblogging/momstagramming sphere, but Willow can already see where it's going, and she is, well, over it. When by chance the girls meet, they find in each other someone who understands what's it's like to be discontent with their lives being mined for content.

Although this is for a middle grade audience, it feels like it's hitting the mark that Hate Follow missed. Neither girl's mother is entirely unaware: Hadley's mother doesn't name her children, and she pays them for content they appear in...but she doesn't give them a choice about appearing in that content. And Willow's mother has told her that it's temporary, and things will die down...although, with changes on the horizon, that seems less and less likely. Their mother's brands are different, which I also appreciate—Hadley's mother's can be summed up as "kids ruined my life" and Willow's as "sunshine and rainbows".

I expected to relate more to Hadley than to Willow here and was surprised to find that Willow is pretty solidly relatable herself (though—I still don't know how she has a secret Instagram account if she's not allowed to have a smartphone). It ends up being Hadley who repeatedly acts without thinking about the consequences, and I think in some ways I would have preferred if they'd each had separate secret Instagram accounts (with only each other as followers) and then Hadley had...done things with a little more accident and a little less intent. I guess it's just...she makes a number of mistakes in the book, and although that is normal for a tween (or for an adult!), they are big mistakes, to the point where if I had a friendship with her I'd be pulling back big time, in a "forgive her but protect yourself too" kind of way. (Maybe Willow is just a bigger person than I am.)

All in all, though, this was really satisfying. I hope it finds its way into a lot of middle school libraries, because I suspect there are plenty of tweens who could use a reminder that Internet fame is not all it's cracked up to be.