GOING LIVE

A Gen Z Story

GOING LIVE

When Maya Chen's phone is stolen at a Brooklyn house show, she loses more than a device—she loses the carefully curated identity she's spent three years building.

Twenty-four and broke, Maya has turned performing authenticity into a full-time job. Morning coffee staged for the algorithm. Vintage aesthetic monetized. Her 47,000 followers think they know her. They don't know she's ghosting her family in Queens. They don't know she's one missed rent payment from disaster.

They definitely don't know her nineteen-year-old sister Jade is posting as her.

And Jade's content? It's better. More honest. More real.

Armed with only a flip phone from a corner bodega, Maya is forced offline for the first time in years. She discovers Frequencies—a vinyl shop about to be displaced by the gentrification she's been unwittingly promoting. She reconnects with Ezra, the shop's principled owner who's never owned a smartphone. She confronts Jade, who's been using Maya's platform to say all the things Maya was too scared to admit.

The platform exists. Forty-seven thousand people are paying attention. The question is: what do you do with that?

Maya thought her crisis was losing her phone. Her real crisis is choosing between the performance that pays and the truth that costs. Between the Brooklyn identity she built and the Queens family she abandoned. Between going viral and actually living.

A sharp, funny, and deeply honest story about digital culture, family, and what it means to be authentic when authenticity is a brand. For readers who loved Such a Fun Age, Exciting Times, and anyone who's ever performed their life for strangers while ignoring the people who actually matter.

Perfect for fans of contemporary fiction exploring digital culture, Gen Z identity, family dynamics, and the costs of performance in the age of social media.