Whoever You Are, Honey

A Novel

By: Olivia Gatwood

Narrated by: Olivia Gatwood

What happens when what was once considered dystopia is now reality?

This darkly brilliant debut novel explores how women shape themselves beneath the gaze of love, friendship, and the algorithm—“a fever dream for the AI age” (People).

“This book reads like a thriller, but it's also a tender and searching exploration of what it means to inhabit a female body.”—Kelly Link, author of The Book of Love

A TIME AND VOGUE BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR

Mitty can’t quite make out the expression on Lena’s face, but she doesn’t look distressed. She looks like nothing at all. She looks like the beginning, before thoughts, a white hallway with no doors, a room so long your voice disappears before it can echo.

On the Santa Cruz, California, waterfront, every house is a flawless glass monolith. Except for one. In a dilapidated bungalow, Mitty and her elderly roommate, Bethel, are the oddball pair who represent the last vestiges of a free-spirited town taken over by the tech elite. But their lives are about to be forever changed when a new couple, Sebastian and Lena, move in next door.

Sebastian is a renowned tech founder and Lena is his spellbindingly perfect girlfriend. But Lena has secrets; she feels uneasy about her oddly spotty memory and is growing increasingly wary of the way Sebastian controls their relationship. Mitty is also hiding something, and the way Lena appears to float through her luxurious life draws Mitty inexorably into her orbit. As the two women begin to form a close friendship, they are finally forced to face their pasts—and the urgent truths that could change everything.

Showcasing Olivia Gatwood’s talent as an essential author for our hyper-digital age, Whoever You Are, Honey is a gripping, seductive, and prescient novel that dissects relationships between women and examines how striving for perfection and desirability plays out in spaces where technology and power intersect.

Interesting…..but kept me listening

A somewhat abrupt open ended ending…. Leaves a lot to consider.
Also at times I wondered where the story was going and then it would come together.

I don’t regret listening to, it was good….just wished I would have caught on a flash sale for under $5 rather than using a credit,

I will say the narration (by the author) is FANTASTIC.
That made it worth it.

Love the writing!

I wasn’t sure where this story was going, but the author hooked me with her poetic writing.

This book will stay with me! Beautiful story.

This was my first time reading Olivia Gatwood’s work and it was beautiful. I loved the way the mysteries of the story unfolded and that it also had such a focus on what it means to be a woman throughout. The writing was so perfectly descriptive that it was easy to imagine everything and to understand and relate to how the characters were feeling. Olivia’s narration was great as well. I loved her voice. I’ll be reading her poetry next and I definitely look forward to more novels by Olivia. I don’t usually leave written reviews but this book absolutely deserved one.

What refreshing beauty

I first found introduced to Olivia Gatwood through her poetry, -and my gosh, cannot woman write.
The story had me by the throat by the heart and by the hips . It was as if a fabric blindfold that was unknowingly at VR headset had wrapped itself around my imagination beautifully surrounding my vision in the world that Olivia spoke. This story is everything without being too much.
It is a perfect cup of coffee, rich and bold brewed to perfection handed to you a sleeve, already casing the warm liquid inside while leaving room at the top for the reader to fill it to the brim with their own perseverance and imprints. How I sorely wish they were more books like this.

Left speechless

I don’t have the words to describe this book. Just read it! So so good