Book Review - Unfiltered by Sophie White

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Title: Unfiltered

Author: Sophie White

Format reviewed: Ebook

Source: Netgalley

Publisher: Hachette Books Ireland

Publication Date: 18th June 2020

Rating: 5 Stars

Ali and Shelly are back. But behind the filters, things are more chaotic than ever.

After faking a pregnancy to gain more Instagram followers, Ali Jones figured she'd be an internet pariah. But while her mentions are a mess, it turns out that her following is bigger than ever. And now that she's pregnant for real, Ali quickly realises that she might have to wade once more into the Insta-world to fund the new baby bump. With Sam, her ex, still ignoring her and her mother having a mild grief-induced psychotic breakdown, what else has Ali to cling to but #sponcons and #ootds?

Enter Amy Donoghue, social media manager extraordinaire, with a plan to rehabilitate Ali's image.

Meanwhile, Queen of the Influencers, Shelly, is still being hounded by her mysterious Insta-stalker. And with @HolisticHazel busy creating W Y N D festival (her answer to the Goop Summit) and @PollysFewBits being as non-descript as ever, Shelly has to deal with this latest drama without the help of her Mumfluencer friends - before it gets out of control.

The free swag may be good but will Ali and Shelly realise the Insta Life's not worth losing the people that matter most?

Reading Unfiltered makes me very glad that I'm a book blogger, and not well anything on instagram.  Life on the gram is sounding utterly exhausting  and bonkers, and the various grammers in this story are very close to being unhinged!! 

This is fantastic sequel, that continues almost immediately after the previous book ends, and catapults us back into the zany world of Ali and Shelly, two of Ireland's top mummy instagrammers.  Well apart from Ali isn't actually a mum yet, and the world is still reeling from her fake pregnancy, when she discovers it is now real! 

And Shelly's private life isn't  fabulous, she is also pregnant, and has picked up a stalker too,  which leads to some really creepy moments and in pivotal towards the end of the book too. 

This is a fast paced story that is full of cutting observations of real life and social media, and how you portray yourself to others.  Told in alternating chapters of Ali and Shelly, we get to see all the nitty gritty in their lives, much of it quite hilarious, and at other times mildly worrying.   

There are some tougher subjects examined carefully, but on the whole this is a light hearted book, that has made me smile a lot over the past few days while reading it.  I am thoroughly invested these characters lives and would be highly curious to see another book in the series, or failing that what Sophie White will write next, as I am loving her writing. 

An absolute joy to read. 

Thank you to Hachette Books Ireland and Netgalley for this copy which I have reviewed honestly and voluntarily