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Idol  By  cover art

Idol

By: Louise O'Neill
Narrated by: Kate Handford
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Publisher's summary

Brought to you by Penguin.

'Follow your heart, and speak your truth.'

For Samantha Miller's young fans—her 'girls'—she's everything they want to be. She's an oracle, telling them how to live their lives, how to be happy, how to find and honour their 'truth'.

And her career is booming: she's just hit three million followers, her new book Chaste has gone straight to the top of the best-seller lists and she's appearing at sell-out events.

Determined to speak her truth and bare all to her adoring fans, she's written an essay about her sexual awakening as a teenager, with her female best friend, Lisa. She's never told a soul, but now she's telling the world. The essay goes viral.

But then—years since they last spoke—Lisa gets in touch to say that she doesn't remember it that way at all. Her memory of that night is far darker. It's Sam's word against Lisa's—so who gets to tell the story? Whose 'truth' is really a lie?

'You put yourself on that pedestal, Samantha. You only have yourself to blame.'

Riveting, compulsive and bold, Idol interrogates our relationship with our heroes and explores the world of online influencers, asking how well we can ever really know those whose carefully curated profiles we follow online. And it asks us to consider how two memories of the same event can differ and how effortlessly we choose which stories to believe.

©2022 Louise O'Neill (P)2022 Penguin Audio

Critic reviews

"Idol is fresh, glamorous and surprising, taking an issue we all care about and with a deft twist, recalibrating our position. It dazzles us before revealing the darkness at its heart." (Marian Keyes)

"A literary tour de force." (Irish Independent)

"A vital and necessary presence in contemporary literature." (Sarah Perry)

What listeners say about Idol

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Page turner

Overall, I enjoyed this book and thought the narration was excellent. Idol got me through an awful reading slump and is definitely one of the most addictive books I’ve finished this year. I did think it’d would be a bit more challenging, but still a good read nonetheless.

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Great read!

I think the cover and name make Idol look like a fun beach read, and while it's quite easy and quick to read, it's so dark and the topic is HEAVY. Lot's of interesting things to discuss, had a really good time listening.

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