Review: Meme by Aaron Starmer
Meme
by Aaron Starmer
Thank you NetGalley and Dutton for this copy.
Publisher: Dutton
Publish Date: September 8, 2020
Kindle Edition
Genre: Psychological Thriller, Young Adult
No one is going to miss Cole Weston. A loner without friends or family and an unhealthy obsession with the darker corners of the internet, Cole had become increasingly violent toward his ex-girlfriend, and threated to do so much worse. So it was only logical–only right, really–that his former friends took it upon themselves to rid the world of Cole Weston.
Now, Logan, Meeka, Holly, and Grayson are forever bound by Cole’s body, buried under the cold Vermont earth. The failsafe should any one of them consider betrayal: their old phones, buried with Cole, disconnected from service, and each wiped clean except for one file–their video confession.
As expected, no one misses Cole. Or even realizes he’s gone. But a few days later, the meme appears. It’s a stupid meme, old school and not even funny. But every terrible joke has one thing in common, the same photo–a screenshot from the confession video still entombed six feet under with Cole.
My Review:
Uff... I really, REALLY wanted to like this one but unfortunately it fell very short for me. As a meme lover, I couldn't help but be drawn in to with the title and the synopsis. And for some reason I thought this was horror but turns out it's actually a thriller ... and not very thrilling at that.
The book opens up nicely with the gang burying their "friend", Cole. The timeline alternates here and there and goes through each of their POVs so you get a full rounded picture of what was going on within this crew of characters. Honestly, I LOVE to hate on characters but they need to be complex and interesting and I just didn't find any of these teens intriguing.
What I did like about this book is how social media/memes, etc. can become extremely hurtful and how teenagers actually will react to being publicly shamed with these. Unfortunately this is an all too real problem in society. However, the reasoning behind the initial murder didn't hold water and the ending was just no..... it felt like someone doing a voice over and while I don't mind ambiguous endings at times, the openness of this one failed to impress.
★★
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