Review: Just Watch Me by Lior Torenberg

Dell is not in a great place in her life. She has just been fired from her job after taking a somewhat over-the-top approach with a customer who cannot reason that staff do not make up company policy and nor can they break it at their discretion. This is something of a problem, as her beloved younger sister is currently on life support. The hospital is about to pull the plug and Dell needs to come up with the funds for private care, quickly. An impulse decision leads her to start live streaming her life so that she can raise the funds. What follows is a story of how women are treated on the internet, and how some viewers try to own the very people that they claim to be fans of. 

Just Watch Me is a bold look at live streaming and internet culture. I found it to be a compelling read, with certain truths revealed over the course of the plot. Dell is whip smart, but chaotic with little understanding of what she is doing and the unforgiving nature of strangers. It also becomes clear that she is deep in a kind of pain that her followers have absolutely no understanding of, while they encourage her to perform more and more self-destructive stunts. There is also the problem of a stalker. He's a dangerous character, whose behaviour and methods are never once questioned by the same people who eventually make some big moral judgements about Dell. 

Author Lior Torenberg's real talent is in the way she makes Dell, an otherwise angry and unpleasant character, into someone that the reader can feel empathy for, even while she is making foolish choices and hurting the people in her life who genuinely care about her.

Overall, a fantastic glimpse into grief and an unforgiving modern world.