Review by Booklist Review
Cricket Lopez has been the assistant to stylist Sasha Sherman for eight long years, long enough that she should have been promoted by now and too long to take Sasha's constant abuse. Even @DeuxMoi, an anonymous Instagram account she started, hoping to launch a lifestyle brand, has totally floundered. When a celebrity client betrays her, Cricket posts about the infraction to @DeuxMoi, drunkenly encouraged by her best friends, who share celebrity tidbits of their own. It's meant to be good, anonymous fun, except that it totally takes off, and soon @DeuxMoi has thousands of followers who submit their own celebrity sightings and gossip. Written by the brains behind the real @DeuxMoi, this roman à clef and debut novel has an addictive story and strong Devil Wears Prada (2003) vibes. As Cricket struggles to balance her passion for Instagram with the rest of her life, including a budding romance with a sexy magazine editor, she must also fight to remain anonymous. Peppered with news clippings, Instagram posts, and a whole bunch of brand-name dropping, Anon Pls. will appeal to readers looking for a dishy, juicy ride.HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: @Deuxmoi is a veritable media sensation, so expect this first novel with thinly disguised celebrity cameos to garner lots of attention.
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
The evocative if underwhelming debut novel by the creator of celebrity-gossip Instagram account Deuxmoi, cowritten with Goodman (They Wish They Were Us), delves into the gossip and toxic culture of fashion and media. Cricket Lopez, assistant to celebrity stylist Sasha Sherman, has dealt with routine abuse and humiliation at her job for eight years. But when an influencer client reneges on a deal, ruining Cricket's prospects for a promotion, she takes to Instagram to rant, and, in a drunken stupor, calls on followers to dish on other big names, with Sasha in the crosshairs for her toxic behavior and enabling of sexual predators. Overnight, her anonymous style account morphs into a celebrity-gossip blog called Deuxmoi. Cricket's DMs fill with celebrity sightings and juicy Hollywood scoops. Soon, investors and journalists want to collaborate amidst growing curiosity about who runs Deuxmoi. As the Instagram handle gains notoriety and Cricket has a virtual romance with the editor-in-chief of a popular magazine, she starts slacking at work and neglecting friendships. And when a journalist starts connecting the dots between Cricket and Deuxmoi, she realizes social media could make or break her. While the authors examine important themes--sexism, power imbalances, and enabler culture--there's often too much exposition, and Cricket's character development feels forced. It offers some insights on what makes an influencer tick, but not much else. Agent: Eve Attermann, WME. (Nov.)
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review
The anonymous DeuxMoi, who maintains one of the most heatedly active celebrity pop culture accounts on Instagram thanks to 1.3 million followers, joins forces with New York Times best-selling author Jessica Goodman to craft the tale of a burned-out fashion assistant who launches a hot gossip blog. With a 150,000-copy first printing.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
Both an ad for the real deuxmoi, a pseudonymous celebrity-gossip Instagram account, and a surprisingly good read. For eight years, Cricket Lopez has been the abused assistant of Manhattan celebrity stylist Sasha Sherman, the former queen of reality TV. After one particularly humiliating day and very boozy evening, Cricket restarts her anonymous Instagram account,deuxmoi, airing the dirty laundry about her firm's new influencer client and asking fans to spill the tea about their celebrity encounters. The account goes viral, and soon everyone is talking about the unverified blind items detailing celebrity sex habits and restaurant sightings as well as guessing who the anonymous creator is. Cricket navigates the tidal wave of secret notoriety alongside Leon, her snarky but sweet co-worker, and Victoria, her BFF since high school who married out of the fashion industry and into the country-club world of the Upper East Side. But as the account grows in its influence, Sasha's firm flounders, and their main A-list client may be the next to fall prey to his own history of sexual misconduct and predatory behavior. Sasha grows even more out-of-control, an internet tycoon wants to buy deuxmoi, a reporter is ready to out her, and Cricket and her friends can lose even more than they thought possible. And then there's Ollie Snyder, the editor-in-chief of a Billboard-type entertainment magazine, who is as hot as Hollywood and slides into Cricket's DMs, offering advice and very steamy sex. For deuxmoi fans, this novel will be a solid extension of the brand's coming-of-age story, and they'll especially enjoy the inside jokes and liberal quotes from the real-life account, which helps create the tantalizing-yet-relatable tone. For nonfans, this autofiction is reminiscent of other of-the-moment bad-boss books like Leigh Stein's Self Care. A candid, unexpected critique of celebrity, hanger-on, and enabler culture. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
