A review by kenfoxley
The Subtweet by Vivek Shraya

challenging emotional funny hopeful inspiring reflective sad tense medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

Everything follows us online, forever. You post something on social media and all at once someone thinks its about them, even if you’re just venting to an open space about something that’s on your mind. I’ve been guilty of this, and victim to this so many times in my online presence since I was a teenager. It’s dangerous, because it can really ruin friendships, relationships, put a strain on relationships in your life or even ruin relationships fully.

Neela is an indie artist who has been called a “has been” and a “nobody” but when RUK-MINI covers one of her songs and the internet blows up over it, Rukmini gets things thrown at her that Neela has been working towards her entire musical career. They become friends, but once Rukmini starts getting things thrown at her Neela becomes jealous and envious that these things hadn’t happened to her yet.

Rukmini gets offered an opening act spot on a famous artists worldwide tour, at first Neela is super happy for her and she is very supportive. As their texts become more and more infrequent as the tour goes on, Neela starts to feel like Rukmini only used her to become more famous than her. As Rukmini is on tour Neela creates an album by herself that she thinks will pull her career out of the water, have people talking about her constantly and blow up way more than Rukmini has. When her album flops and is only retweeted by four people she grows even more mad that maybe everyone was right that she is a has been, a nobody, so she checks Rukmini’s twitter where she finds a selfie of Rukmini surrounded by a crowd of white people. Neela takes this as an attack that Rukmini is “pandering to white people” as a brown, South Asian woman. So she subtweets about it with Rukmini’s original, leaked album hashtag #hegemony, we later find out was leaked by the same person Rukmini is on tour with.

Neela’s tweet blows up over night, the next morning and over the course of a few days her follower count quadruples, the tweet has since been deleted but attention is all over her and Rukmini’s feud on the internet. Rukmini has gone silent everywhere, attacks being thrown at her left and right. When news comes out that her best friend she recorded and came up with all the songs on Hegemony had died several years before according to Malika’s cousin, Rukmini deleted her entire twitter account and practically disappeared off the internet all together. From here Neela doesn’t know what to do. She can’t get a hold of Rukmini by text, no phone calls, nothing.

When Hayley (the famous pop artist Rukmini goes on tour with) confronts Neela and wants to sit down and speak with her, she finds out a lot that Rukmini didn’t even know about. Hayley had actually gone to college with Rukmini, they knew of each other and Hayley had been super supportive of both Rukmini and Malika and their music, she was actually the one who leaked the music they wrote together. Neela had no idea how to get a hold of Rukmini so Hayley and her came up with a plan: Neela was going to be the opening act for one of Hayley’s shows. At the show Neela decides to cover one of Rukmini’s songs off Hegemony to get her attention, and I thought that was cool because it came full circle, Rukmini covered one of her songs, and then Neela covered one of her songs.

I have a hard time rating this book to be honest, I wanted to love it, but the ending sort of ruined it for me. I really wanted to see them be reunited once more but Neela covering Rukmini’s song was the ending.

I kinda lean on giving this 4.5 stars, but I want to give it 4.25 stars.