Book Review: You Will Never Be Me by Jesse Q. Sutanto

I don’t know if anyone writing today delves quite as hard as Jesse Q. Sutanto does into toxic, obsessive female friendships. She writes so unflinchingly of terrible thoughts and behavior, showing not only their aftermath but also their genesis, as her characters love and fight and some ultimately even kill over the course of their relationships. I thought her earlier novel I’m Not Done With You Yet was a masterpiece of the subgenre but this one outstrips even that.

Aspen is a social media influencer with millions of followers hungry for her wholesome Mom content. It’s taken years for her to grow her platform from her days as a struggling singer on YouTube, but meeting Ben, the man who would become her husband, finally helped her figure out her ultimately very lucrative niche. Now she posts regularly about her days as a wife and mother to six year-old twins (one of whom is diabetic) and an infant, showing off the ways in which she keeps their family running.

Her best friend Meredith is allegedly happy for her. Mer knows that if it wasn’t for her, Aspen would probably still be a nobody. After all, Mer was the seasoned beauty and lifestyle influencer who helped Aspen get her initial toehold on Instagram. But as Aspen’s career has taken off while Mer’s has stagnated, Mer can’t help but feel betrayed.

After one particularly vicious argument between the two, Mer blocks Aspen on all communication channels but still can’t help missing her. The two had been inseparable for so long, confiding in each other the things they would tell no one else, that their rupture affects both of them in an almost physical way. Unable to swallow her pride but unwilling to let go either, Mer breaks into Aspen’s electronics and discovers a startling truth about her BFF’s posts:

I didn’t know the extent to which one could fake it for the camera. Seems obvious now, but I never thought of making beautiful food that I would later simply throw away and replace with less aesthetically pleasing ones to eat. And as I scroll through Aspen’s uncut videos, it becomes stunningly clear that this is what she’s been doing for years. Her Reels are…productions. They are not snippets of her life or glimpses behind the curtains. They are entire productions that she’s composed beforehand and then taken time out of her real life to act out and edit. A complete fabrication of what a life governed for aesthetics looks like.

Armed with this knowledge, Mer is intent on getting Aspen back into her life, but on her own terms. First, she’s going to humble her friend a little, in order to make Aspen need her the way Aspen used to. But as Mer finds herself crossing various ethical lines, she begins to second guess herself. How far will she go to explode her best friend’s seemingly unbreachable façade? After all, Mer is doing all this out of love, isn’t she?

Aspen can’t figure out why her life has fallen apart so disastrously after her big fight with Mer. She keeps missing meetings with key sponsors, other influencers are treating her with disdain, and even her husband is being more hateful than usual. Aspen has worked so hard for so long to project an image of easy yet seemingly attainable perfection, as she’s one of the few people who understands that her lifestyle is a business. In this, she’s always been more clear-eyed than either Mer or Ben about what it takes to succeed in the 21st century, no matter the emotional toll:

Tears scald my cheeks. What am I crying over? My utter shambles of a marriage, or my ruined friendship? I can’t ignore the feeling that neither is salvageable. The problem with Mer and Ben is that they both loved me only when I was a naïve girl with stars and sweet inexperience in my eyes, and a pure innocent willingness to drink their every word of advice like it was scripture. As soon as I outgrew them, their kindness and generosity sharpened into jealousy. Each time I dared to share any piece of advice I had learned along the way with them, I was quickly smacked down, reminded that my place isn’t above or even beside them. I entered their lives as a follower, and a follower I must stay.

When Mer suddenly disappears, Aspen’s immaculately curated life implodes. Hounded by the press for information, Aspen will have to figure out how to protect what matters to her most, even as she becomes the recipient of mysterious threats. Will the strength of Aspen and Mer’s once firm friendship help them finally save one another?

There are plot twists aplenty in this absorbing and extremely internet-savvy thriller of two women navigating the business of social media in order to keep body and soul together. The monetization of platforms like TikTok, Instagram and YouTube have made it so that people can make a living off of making short videos about their interests and lives. Some people might find this frivolous or easy, but Ms. Sutanto underscores the fact that this is real and often difficult work.

She further draws parallels between social media and the lives of women struggling to be adequately compensated for their domestic contributions. Patriarchal capitalist systems insist that the running of a household and raising of children are so easy that women should be grateful to be given those tasks unpaid. This injury is further compounded by the insulting expectation for women to be attractive and nice to others no matter the circumstance. It’s hard not to be sympathetic to both Aspen and Mer as they work to survive in these systems, even when they’re driven to terrible lengths to get what they feel they each deserve.