Fan Club, by Erin Mayer, (Oct. 2021, Mira), $16.99, ISBN: 9780778311591
Ages 16+
A young woman falls into obsessive fandom in this novel with YA/new adult interests. Fan Club follows a first-person narrator who’s bored with her life working at a women’s lifestyle website until the night she hears a new song by pop star Adriana Argento. The song speaks to hear like nothing she’s heard before, and becomes obsessed with the star, ultimately falling into an online fandom where fans obsess over Argento’s every Instagram post, song lyrics, and appearances. A coworkers invites her to join her group of Adriana superfans who call themselves “The Ivies”; a group of young women who gather to listen to her music and talk about the star, her life and career, with eerie, almost cult-like devotion. As she becomes more mired in the group, the narrator discovers a horrible secret about the women – but is she too far gone to pull away?
Fan Club is so timely in its depiction of our celebrity-obsessed society and social media, toxic, and obsessive fandom culture. It’s not a character-driven book; readers may recognize character archetypes, but this read is purely about the big picture. Acerbic, dark humor takes aim at pop culture and makes this a read your teen and young adult/new adults will devour. Display and booktalk with Megan Angelo’s Followers and Goldy Moldavsky’s Kill the Boy Band.
Mom Read It 