The Haters – Robyn Harding

Camryn Lane is living her dream. After years of struggle and rejection, her first novel has finally been published. Her editor is happy; her teenage daughter is proud; and her boyfriend and friends are all excited for her. She’s on top of the world—until she receives a disturbing message from an unknown sender.

Rattled by the accusations she finds there, Camryn swallows the sick feeling in her stomach and resolves to put the missive out of her mind. But when she checks her ratings on a popular book site, she finds a scathing one-star review. The reviewer is so articulate and convincing that soon, Camryn’s book is flooded with bad reviews. Could the reviewer be the same person who sent the ugly email? And why do they want to ruin her?

As the online harassment creeps into Camryn’s personal life, she vows to find out who’s behind it. Is it really a disgruntled reader? Or could it be someone she knows?

Review

Instagram made me do it! Finally, after seeing this book literally even on my SLEEP, I caved in and buddy read The Haters.

The book alternates between the narration of Camryn, our protagonist, and excerpts from her debut novel, Burnt Orchid, which initiates all the chaos. If you are familiar with mysteries, you KNOW these chapters are significant clues.

The depiction of Camryn’s situation, along with the events surrounding her trolling and “cancellation”, was extremely accurate. You may think that a lot of what was depicted was over the top, but I assure you, as someone that has witnessed many author cancellations on social media, this is quite literally a documentary. To the newbies: may I introduce you to Kathleen Hale?

There were a LOT of characters, many of whom I felt were just there for the purpose of playing red herrings, and even though I had clocked the identity of the troll (or trolls), I still didn’t feel satisfied. It also didn’t help that the ending wrapped up way too quickly, in around a chapter and an epilogue.

This book works well as a mockumentary, if you will. I would recommend diving in with the purpose of seeing how unhinged people are, and that while yes, we now live in a strange world where many people get offended by absolute ANYTHING and will witch-hunt anyone based on lies, authors should also help themselves and not make matters worse when put in an uncomfortable situation.

Read The Haters for the wild ride!!

Click for spoilers!

Fiona was the mastermind behind it all.

Burnt Orchid mirrored Fiona’s teen life (and I feel it was a bit of a self insert of Camryn as well into her).

Shane the hacker wasn’t a scammer; rather, he died in a house fire caused by Abbie. She went to his house to retrieve Camryn’s computer and everything that Shane discovered that incriminated her, and took the fire scene on Burnt Orchid as inspiration.

When Camryn notices Abbie’s burn on her arm and realises she was responsible for the fire, Abbie tells her that Fiona was the one who orchestrated all the harassment. In a way, both Fiona and Abbie were responsible for the harassment, as Abbie was the one who was trolling Camryn online.

It was a little convoluted because Fiona lied to Abbie that Liza was the one that actually gave her the drugs in the party incident, but it was 100% Fiona who did it, recorded her, and uploaded the video.

Abbie was charged with Shane’s death and put in a psychiatric facility because of the PTSD nature of her reasons.

Camryn keeps on being a counsellor at a different school.