Review: Queen of Likes

Queen of Likes by Hillary Homzie
My rating: 1 of 5 stars

Mmmm, anti-technology cautionary tales.

We have a girl names Karma who is obsessed with an Instagram-style clone. Her parents don't like her social media fame, she breaks a rule and loses access to the phone. She quickly Learns Her Lesson through volunteering and that there's more to life than just getting approval on social media. Everyone's happy.

Argh, this book. Yes, there's more to life than technology and social media. No, that doesn't mean that we must treat our phones like cancer. No, this doesn't mean that we need to be Luddites about everything. No, this especially doesn't mean we need to treat local historical societies as the last standard-bearers of a more innocent and humane time in which technology wasn't perverting everything.

This book just irritated me. Everything about it felt insincere and melodramatic, from the cover to the cardboard caricatures within the book. It's almost too preachy and on the nose, and sends just a terrible message. There's a way to write a book about our relationship with technology (especially in a teen/school setting) that does not require us to look at technology in such a negative way. It's just as unhealthy to treat cell phones, social media, and the like as negative tools as it is to be chained to our devices, and this book misses that completely.

Avoid this like the plague. It's just not a good read or a good message. Closer to a 1.5, but I'm not feeling generous.

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