“People Like Her” Review

Spoiler Alert – This review contains content that could spoil the book for people who have not read the book

I first heard about the book People Like Her from watching a YouTube video about great books to read by the YouTuber Jenn Im. I’ve followed some of her stuff since it was recommended to me by the algorithm and for the most part, her videos are decent to watch.

This book is about a couple named Emmy and Dan and their lives while Emmy tackles being an Instagram famous. I read a summary of the book before reading it and there was a comparison to Gone Girl, which if I recall Gone Girl correctly, People Like Her does have some similar elements.

Even though the book premise is not something I would automatically be interested in, the writing was very approachable and easy to read. It was also cool to read the book with a number of different perspectives. The book jumps between Emmy’s POV, Dan’s POV, and Jill’s POV as various events occur. From an early point in the book, it was clear that Jill was planning on doing something to Emmy, but it was not clear to me what she was going to do and what she set up. Also, it took a really long time for me to figure out why Jill even was obsessed with MamaBare (Emmy’s Instagram handle) and why Jill wanted to enact revenge. When it was finally explained, I was in shock… like are you kidding me? Jill’s daughter Grace was having a tough time taking care of her baby since the baby cried a lot so Grace looked into cosleeping and whether that was a viable option for her and the baby. Apparently during a MamaBare meet up, Emmy mentioned that cosleeping had helped her when she was raising her daughter Coco. In Jill’s opinion, that meeting convinced Grace to actually cosleep with her child EVEN THOUGH Grace had researched this topic extensively and saw numerous pros and cons about cosleeping. After one cosleeping session, Grace’s baby died and her family was devastated and was not able to recover from the trauma. Obviously this is a horrible thing that happened, but like the literal first article I found about cosleeping was that NO ONE should EVER cosleep with their child, especially if they are under 6 months old – the recommendation is to room share.

Anyways, I thought that the book was an enjoyable read. I finished the book in roughly 2 weeks – half of which I think I finished on the first day I checked the book out from the library. I think that this book illustrates how scary it can be when you or a loved one gets famous or is in the public eye for an extended period of time. It’s tough to live a life under the microscope, especially when your brand and livelihood is to be and act a certain way. Also, I think that raising children is pretty dang tough and it is even tougher if they are rowdy and crying all the time. Like even the least fussy babies take a lot of time and attention.