People Like Her, a domestic thriller by husband-and-wife writing team Collette Lyons and Paul Vlitos (under the pseudonym Ellery Lloyd), is a devilishly smart look at the competitive world of Instagram influencing. Emmy Jackson might have left her career as a fashion editor behind when she had children, but motherhood gave her a new, expanding career as an Insta-mum. With an agent, a new assistant and a growing, rabid fanbase, Emmy's professional future looks bright, but her novelist husband, Dan, is tired of Emmy's success and desperate for a breakthrough of his own. A mysterious stalker begins to orbit closer to Emmy and Dan, and it isn't just the cracks in the foundation of their marriage that might ultimately bring down their house.
Even with a slew of domestic thrillers crowding bookshelves, People Like Her stands out with its impeccable character development, sinister twists and razor-sharp cultural commentary. The book splits into three perspectives--Emmy, Dan and their unnamed stalker--and balances precariously between the push and pull of three insatiable personalities. The menacing stalker is the most overt threat and keeps the novel's tension running high, but Emmy and Dan's ever-escalating attempts to win readers' sympathies ultimately steal the show. By introducing the stalker's perspective early on, the novel distracts its readers by inviting them to anticipate when this malevolent force will break onto the scene. Even with constant vigilance, or perhaps because of it, readers won't be able to see every twist coming. And the twists themselves are sure to induce nightmares. --Alice Martin, freelance writer and editor