A young woman walks the fine line between devotion and entitlement in Fan Club, the riveting debut novel by Erin Mayer.
The narrator is a junior member of the editorial staff at a lifestyle website, dissatisfied with her job and growing more distant from her roommate. One evening she goes out with some coworkers and is struck unexpectedly by the latest single by Adriana Argento, a pop icon whom she previously mostly ignored. She dives into the online fandom and is invited by Meghan, a new staff member, to join her in-person Adriana Argento fan club. The women hold listening parties that end with candlelit, cultish rituals, but they are upset with the direction of Argento's new music. The narrator comes to realize that the lengths to which they will go are greater than she imagined.
Fan Club is a dark, compelling thriller about the need to belong and the dark aspects of fandom. The narrator is teetering on the brink of developing friendships with some of the other editorial staff, but she remains drawn to Meghan and her friends, with whom she shares a profound experience of music. However, the devotion that the other members of the club have for Argento leads to feelings of betrayal and rage when the artist writes music that isn't what they want to hear or dates somebody of whom they don't approve. They are already hiding one dark secret, and they may drag the narrator under with the next. This deliciously dark thriller will leave readers wanting more from Mayer. --Kristen Allen-Vogel, information services librarian at Dayton Metro Library