Last Seen Online

Gottie Writes #1

by Lauren James, Wren James

A contemporary YA murder mystery set in sun-drenched LA, for fans of Malibu Rising, We Were Liars and A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder.

The novel of Lauren James' hugely popular online story "An Unauthorised Fan Treatise"

When Delilah meets Sawyer Saffitz (son of Anya Saffitz, aka Hollywood royalty), she becomes hooked on a decade-old scandal. In her quest for the truth, Delilah uncovers blogposts written by the mysterious “gottiewrites” and is soon caught up in a world of greed, fandom conspiracy theories … and murder. And the deeper Delilah digs, the more dangerous it becomes – because someone is willing to kill to hide the truth.

Genres: Mystery, Young Adult, Thriller, Contemporary, Mystery Thriller, Crime, Romance

314 pages, Paperback

First published August 1, 2024

About the author

**This is my old author profile - follow https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/1... for ongoing updates!***




Wren James is the Carnegie-longlisted British author of many Young Adult novels as ‘Lauren James’, including Green Rising, The Reckless Afterlife of Harriet Stoker and The Loneliest Girl in the Universe. They are a RLF Royal Fellow at Aston University and the story consultant on Netflix’s Heartstopper (Seasons 2 and 3).

Wren is the founder of the Climate Fiction Writers League, editor of the anthology Future Hopes: Hopeful stories in a time of climate change, and a member of the Society of Authors’ Sustainability Committee. They work as a consultant on climate storytelling for museums, production companies, major brands and publishers, with a focus on optimism and hope. They run a Queer Writers group in Coventry.

Their books have sold over two hundred thousand copies worldwide in seven languages. The Quiet at the End of the World was shortlisted for the YA Book Prize and STEAM Children’s Book Award.

Their other novels include The Next Together series, the dyslexia-friendly novella series The Watchmaker and the Duke and serialised online novel An Unauthorised Fan Treatise.

Wren’s writing has been described as ‘gripping romantic sci-fi’ by the Wall Street Journal and ‘a strange, witty, compulsively unpredictable read which blows most of its new YA-suspense brethren out of the water’ by Entertainment Weekly.

Wren was born in 1992, and has a Masters degree from the University of Nottingham, where they studied Chemistry and Physics. They have taught creative writing for Coventry University, WriteMentor, and Writing West Midlands. Their next release is Last Seen Online.



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Reviews

[Alice Oseman]

Essential reading for anyone with an interest in deeply unhinged fandom behaviour circa 2005-2015!

[Lauren James · Rating 5 out of 5]

17/6/24

This is now up on netgalley for blogger requests!! Go go go! https://www.netgalley.co.uk/catalog/b...

You can also get a preorder goody bag if you preorder in the UK: https://forms.gle/8sadjX5K6peVabH3A


1/7/23

This book now has a TITLE! I wanted to capture the feeling of checking to see what time your crush was last seen online on messenger. Plus, what happens when someone goes missing, and their last activity was online? It's hard to track someone over the internet...

21/6/22

Today I (finally) finished drafting this, my twelfth novel, whoop! This is a contemporary YA murder mystery set in sun-drenched LA, about a long-forgotten fandom conspiracy theory and the lingering after-effects it has on a privileged bubble of high-society Hollywood teens (and their very famous parents). And yes, that's Loch & Ness, the TV show mentioned in The Loneliest Girl in the Universe.

lt's out in 2023 - stay tuned for more info!

(July 2018 - June 2022, 85,000 words + the tie-in prequel novella An Unauthorised Fan Treatise which you can already read at gottiewrites.wordpress.com)

[Stace · Rating 5 out of 5]

4.5 stars. - Last Seen Online is a mixed media YA book featuring teenager Delilah who loves true crime stories and finds herself investigating the death of a TV star.

Delilah’s ambition is to be an actress but during an audition at her school, she embarrasses herself. She finds comfort in Sawyer Saffitz who is the son of a famous Hollywood actress who starred in a detective series back in the day called Loch & Ness. The show ended when one of the main actors was murdered and his co-star was imprisoned for his murder.

Sawyer though doesn’t believe that the police have the right murderer and with Delilah’s love of true crime, she offers to help him prove his theory.

Last Seen Online is a gripping YA book perfect for anyone who adores a good mystery, is into Hollywood stars, and enjoys true crime podcasts/documentaries, etc.

I loved that the book features not only a great story but also messages, scenes from Loch & Ness, blog posts, and comment sections. The reader discovers the same information as Delilah about the case, including information from a missing blogger ‘gottiewrites’ whose site has been restricted by the FBI. They then get to see if they can work out the truth alongside Delilah and see if they come up with the same conclusion.

The book was a quick read and entertaining the whole way through. It becomes edgier and darker the further you read as someone doesn’t like Delilah digging into the past and they may kill to keep the information hidden. Overall, Last Seen Online is a novel that will intrigue and satisfy its YA audience.

[Sara · Rating 5 out of 5]

WHAT A RIDE. Read the entire thing in one afternoon and I have no regrets.

BRAVO!

[Cookie · Rating 4 out of 5]

4,5
Das war für mich genau die richtige Mischung aus Mystery, True Crime, Mixed Media, Internet- und Fandom-Kultur, Humor und einem Hauch Coming-of-Age/Lovestory. Bitte mehr davon. 🙏🏻

[Victoria · Rating 3 out of 5]

very addictive!! I already read AUFT before so I knew a lot of what was coming, and I still ate it up, which is very impressive <3
I do think I prefer AUFT by itself, though. the thing that really got me into AUFT was the slow realisation that gottie is a completely unreliable narrator, which made the final few updates particularly insane (affectionate) to read. I feel like Last Seen Online lacked that particular type of subtlety which made AUFT so strong.

[cassie · Rating 4 out of 5]

man. that sure was something. i love when books have something like blog entries woven into and this whole tumblr/livejournal/2010s fandom thing was a blast to the pasttt. (also lowkey seen myself in delilah here and there; some things were a bit triggering but i'm surprised how much i actually enjoyed a young adult book for once again lmao)

[Chris Haigh · Rating 5 out of 5]

If you were ever part of an all-consuming Tumblr or Livejournal obsession, spent too much time on AO3, or know all too well what Larry Stylinson was, this is for you.

[Sam · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was sooooo goooooood!

As someone who is pretty good at playing detective on the internet herself AND is interested in fandom culture and parasocial relationships this was just the perfect blend for me.

Inserting a murder case in a fandom really shows the absurdity of all those theories online. And if you were ever part of a fandom then all of this reads so realistically. From Larry to Kaylor to AO3 drama, it has all the bits and pieces that remind you of it.

I loved how the two storylines were woven into each other and how at some point Delilah was experiencing the same thing she is currently reading about on a small scale. So clever!

The only thing I didn't quite like as much was the ending. The solution to the murder and everything around it was just ~~spilled~~, no questions asked. That felt a bit to easy.

Also I didn't like the decision Delilah made at the end. But I really hope that's just some sort of cliffhanger that will be solved in another book, because I would read that instantly!!!

4,5 ⭐

[Freya · Rating 2 out of 5]

I just couldn’t get into this one :(. I loved the beginning and I tried for 100 pages but I just felt myself getting distracted more and more.. I just never cared for the investigation which made it feel boring or at least a struggle to get through it. DNF.

[hannah! (lowkey gone) · Rating 4 out of 5]

I LOVED THIS SO MUCH fandoms are so funnn

[Eevee · Rating 2 out of 5]

I loved “An Unauthorised Fan Treatise” so I was waiting for the novel version eagerly. Unfortunately it was just kind of meh?

Unlike the original webnovel this published version intersperses online blogs with prose, focused on the protagonist Delilah and her investigations into the central mystery. These prose sections feel like you could take these from any mystery YA book. They don't have anything particularly unique with the same hallmarks of YA: awkward high school girl gets a crush and has some friend issues while solving the central mystery with conclusions that beat out actual law enforcement. It's not the most compelling. The parallels drawn between Delilah's struggles with online attention after being seen with the son of a celebrity are obviously meant to parallel the fandom world Delilah investigates, but these parallels are not at all subtle and practically hit you over the head to notice the similarities with the unsubtle moral of "internet attention not fun actually".

Maybe if I was more into YA I would have enjoyed these sections, but I enjoyed "An Unauthorised Fan Treatise" without feeling it was too heavily leaning to those genre tropes. I was expecting more from this book, and I guess that's my own fault.

I'm just not really sure who this book is for? If you come in from "An Unauthorised Fan Treatise", there's not a whole lot that's new until you reach the ending, with most of Gottie's journal entries near verbatim from the webnovel. And if you haven't read the original, I can't believe the mystery would be the most compelling as the book being set in the future means you already know what the big drama around Gottiewrites blog was - ie the murder. The original essay was presented in a way that the murder itself was known, but who died and how exactly it tied into the fandom blog was the big mystery.

You could say that the central mystery is no longer "what happened" in relation to Gottie's blog and now "who did it", but I say that is a less interesting mystery especially as it results in a contrived villain speech at the end.

Anyway, if you are interested in this novel I wish to direct you to the original webnovel that is now only available on webarchive (the webnovel has been updated to match the published book, which in my belief is to its detriment.)

[Meg ✨ · Rating 2 out of 5]

2.5⭐️

deeply chronically online

[Horror Sickness · Rating 4 out of 5]

3,5*
As someone that had not previously read AUFT, I went into this book blind.

At first, I was so hooked and so interested in the story. A murder was committed. Was the wrong person paying for it? Delilah is determined to find out.

While investigating an actor’s murder, Delilah discovers blog entries by someone called Gottie. She seems to know exactly what happened the night of the murder.

Delilah together with Sawyer, the son of a famous actress, will go into a deep dive investigation on the case to try to find out what happened to Natha, the murdered actor.

Told through prose as well as some different mixed media bits, the story started very strong and intriguing but at some point it started to lose fuel for me.

I think the premise of this book is very interesting and I did like all the commentary on social media culture, fandom, obsession, how toxic the internet can be, how the truth can be twisted and how people are being judged by fans and people that do not know them.It's a reminder to not trust everything we read online.

As much as I was waiting, still excited to get answers, when the revelations came, I was a bit disappointed. The epilogue also felt forced and rushed.

But all in all, this was an interesting YA mystery with good representation that opens up an interesting conversation about celebrities and how we view them. It also has a good pacing, great mixed media bits and a couple of twists and turns that will satisfy many readers.

Delilah was a very likable and driven character, almost like Pip in AGGGTM.

[Nicole Magolan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not as consuming and chaotic as the original Treatise ebook, but this sort-of-sequel to the fictional fandom treatise is still fun to read and provides some answers left hanging in the original.

But...I kind of wish the original was left as it was, or published as itself. The parts of this book I enjoyed the most were Gottie's blog; the narrative prose didn't appeal to me at all. The bare bones story is so much fun -- a fan argues through blog posts and comment sections that the actors she loves are dating and goes to extreme lengths to prove it... and unravels criminal conspiracies in the process. It's so ridiculous in the best way, and reads just like someone's unhinged tumblr posts (I've been there). The blog's author is an unreliable narrator, and it ends very ambiguously.

This book takes us ten or so years in the future, where the answers are left hanging to be picked up by a high school senior with a true crime podcast obsession. We follow her as she makes insane risks to solve the mystery while she is followed, photographed, threatened, etc. It never feels very realistic, like at all, but it's fairly entertaining.

The revelations at the end were disappointing though. The murderer confesses out of nowhere, and there are no surprises. We didn't even get any red herrings!

If you're interested in the premise I recommend diving into the Unauthorized Fan Treatise. It's such fun.

[Marimkay · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was such a fun and unhinged read, and it captured fandoms and obsessive behavior of people in the internet perfectly, I got so mad while reading some of this hahaha

[Eva · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5

[Anniek · Rating 5 out of 5]

I've said it before and I'll say it again, but Wren James is truly the master of plot twists, and this book once again had some mindblowing twists!

This book was so much more fun having read the online prequel first, and it was amazing seeing all the reveals. Very proud of myself for guessing one of them correctly!

[Konstantin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Absolutely devoured this! Such a page turner and it gets fandom culture and the language just so right. Major Penance vibes in that regard.

[larasbookcase · Rating 4 out of 5]

The twisty intense format of this book was so fun! I loved the blog entries spread out throughout, gradually setting the scene and also demonstrating well the insanity of the internet. An enjoyable read!

[Emilija · Rating 5 out of 5]

Thank you to the publishers for providing an ARC of the book through NetGalley.

2024 52 Book Challenge Mini Challenge - Summer 2024, Olympic Themed 21) Team - Double Letter Word In Title

This book lived rent free in my head for the couple of days that it took to read it. I loved it so much. I loved the way it encapsulates "fandom life" through the blog and the comment section throughout the book.

While the end villain was pretty easy to figure out early on, I guessed correctly between pages 35-50, there were some twists and turns that kept me on the edge of my seat, wanting to skip work to keep reading.

I just thought that it was a really good book.

[Alyssa Thomas]

I'M SCREAMING!!!!!!!!!

[Beth Knight · Rating 5 out of 5]

Lauren James spins true crime, meets fandom, meets thriller, and first love with expert precision. Building on the brilliant and unhinged online story "An Unauthorised Fan Treatise", all of Delilah's acting dreams seem to be coming true as she befriends Sawyer and meets his famous actress mother. She is also undeniably crushing hard on Sawyer. As she is thrown into the glittering world of showbiz she encounters a decade old mystery thick with greed, internet stalking, betrayal and murder she has to get to the bottom of before it kills her.

This was so gripping, the reveals, the twists! I was hooked. I burned through it poolside, literally I got sunburn because I couldn't put it down and I LOVE the ADHD rep that is Delilah - I too had one friend I was hyper fixated on I had a Hannah friend who dumped me for being "too much". Now if only I could find a Sawyer...
Seriously though Wren James ALWAYS delivers. Get this in your hands already.

Thanks to Walker and Netgalley for the eARC. It has not affected my opinions.

[anastasia · Rating 5 out of 5]

YES YES YES!! thank you @sanne for the rec it was a really fun read.

didn’t read the blog before and was surprised that ppl were preferring the blog parts over d the narrator… i really didn’t enjoy the blog parts since i just felt awkward cause i could imagine the larry posts in my head.

honestly could see younger me in delilah sometimes and it lowkey made me cringe. i could just tell how much the book was inspired by larry and it made me laugh sm. just a fun and easy read as someone that’s been involved w fandoms & tumblr 😇

(crazy how jack + lorde also inspired this book(help i’m still at the restaurant)

ps. i need a part 2 asap after the last chapter!!!!!!!

[Laura · Rating 5 out of 5]

A YA Murder Mystery/Thriller with a heavy side of social media and fandoms? The moment I read the synopsis of this book, I knew I was going to love it and I wasn't wrong. Anyone who has been involved in the fandom for something, especially the more prominent ones, will find some relatability to the blog posts and comment sections scattered throughout. They are no picnic, with sometimes wild theories, divided opinions and ship wars. Wren James is clearly familiar with the nature of fan culture, with some fantastic references that anyone who has spent time on this side of the internet will understand.

Though the murder mystery itself is the main focus of the story, Last Seen Online also explores life in the limelight and just how toxic and invasive the seemingly glamourous world of celebrities can really be. It's a reminder to not trust everything we read online, and that the celebrities being idolised aren't necessarily the same in private as they are when they don their public persona.

Complete with twists and turns, a clever narrative and some great and varied representation, Wren James has created a brilliant and gripping story that had me hooked from start to finish.

[Franzi · Rating 4 out of 5]

4,5 stars!! Very exciting read the fandom elements were super interesting and the unhinged behaviour also felt very familiar. The book definitely makes you rethink the way people view celebrities. The murder mystery element was also very intriguing and kept me on my toes until the very last chapter. There were a lot of fun little twists and turns.

[Nora · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 stars

really really poignant about growing up on the internet and like tumblr, and celebrity gossip etc. all the online forum stuff was incredibly well done and accurate!!
the mystery itself was also fun, really thrilling and entertaining. also quite funny.

[Liv B · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5 solid YA murder mystery with lots of (quite zany) twists, great for fans of a good girl’s guide to murder

[Ronja · Rating 5 out of 5]

4.5

[Jente · Rating 3 out of 5]

Dit was een tegenvallertje, al was het tegen het einde wel een stuk beter.