Review: SEARCH HISTORY by Amy Taylor
December 2023 Book Hoes Who Brunch Book
We kicked off December’s book club with brunch. Brunch’s book club started on a warm September morning while we all got drunk at Central Park on apple cider mimosas.
The first book we ever read was called A Novel Obsession by Caitlin Barasch, where a woman starts dating a man with an interesting ex that she can’t help herself from stalking. And she doesn’t stop at just stalking the ex online and in real life. Instead, she decides to befriend the ex and creates an entirely new persona to get close to this ex she’s now wholly obsessed with. It was dark and twisted and fully unhinged.
So when I was offered an ARC of Search History, where a woman becomes increasingly obsessed with her new boyfriend’s dead ex-girlfriend, I knew exactly which book club would have a fun time with a story like this.
Search History is narrated by Ana, a 27-year-old Australian woman who flees Perth to Melbourne after a breakup with her long-term boyfriend. She finds herself at a job she finds unfulfilling and a dating life equally as bland thanks to the struggles of dating app culture. That is until she meets Evan. They meet IRL, which is something everyone is shocked to hear considering that truly never happens anymore, at drinks after work. He’s crisp and clean and Ana immediately notices how nice his teeth are (a telltale sign on the hotness scale). He’s funny, kind, and has his shit together.
But like all women with that slithering inner goblin of insecurity festering in her head, Ana can’t help herself from wanting to learn more about Evan via social media. He’s not entirely forthcoming in conversation over their dates, and Ana struggles with that itch to check her phone every five seconds to see if he’s texted. Who hasn’t gone down the rabbit hole of Instagram stalking someone new in their life? Ana just takes it one step further and not only delves deep into Evan’s social media presence but also that of his ex Emily, who Ana quickly comes to find was killed nine months ago in a hit-and-run.
It doesn’t take long for this obsession to take over and Ana can’t help herself from constantly checking Emily’s feed. Nothing new is ever going to show up, obviously, since she’s dead. But Ana can’t stop from constantly comparing herself to this woman who came before her. Emily + Evan on social media seemed to make up the perfect couple and Ana struggles with what this could mean for who she needs to live up to in Evan’s life.
“Search History explores the contradictions and uncertainties of twenty-first century romance. Ana’s journey down the Internet rabbit hole of modern dating asks the question: Which is our ‘true’ self — the one we show the world online, or the one we keep to ourselves?” (Goodreads)
I’d like to dive into some of my own observations from my reading experience, and then I’ll process the conversation that unfolded at our brunch book club this morning.
Review: Zoë
I resonated with this book on a level I wasn’t prepared for and I was surprised how raw Ana felt to me. Ana and I are the same age and I sometimes saw myself reflected in her day-to-day insecurities when trying to present herself to those in her life.
When we meet Ana, her mother isn’t speaking with her and we very quickly learn her father has been living in Bali and moved away as soon as her parents got divorced when Ana was 10 years old. Neither of her parents ever tell her they love her through the entire book, and there is an aching loneliness in Ana that is made aware early on. For Ana, the concept of a relationship feels almost like something she needs to achieve to feel fully human. Having someone’s attention and being wanted by someone is something she craves considering her parents were incredibly absent for the majority of her life.
We see a lot of this book in two forms: the current happenings and then the aftermath in Ana’s internal monologue. One of the most relatable qualities I found in Ana is her constant inner thoughts where she replays every interaction she’d had to understand what Evan or her friends might be feeling. She fixates on the littlest of tells to play the conversation over and over until she feels she has more understanding of what she feels happens to gain control. One of the most interesting points of this play-by-play is Ana’s full awareness of what she’s doing probably isn’t the most healthy but she can’t stop herself. Just like she can’t stop herself from gorging over Emily’s dormant Instagram feed to feel closer to Evan, or maybe to try and understand him better.
“I understood that, by having only the voices of my own limited mind to converse with, I had likely created a distorted perception.” (pg. 237)
The writing felt sharp and intentional. Ana is a very smart woman operating on a higher level than most around her. But she is constantly undervaluing herself based on the people she interacts with and how they might see her.
I found two compelling focuses in this book that were both connected and oppositional of one another which were: communication and rejection. The book starts with a solid focus on rejection and how to avoid it, and that’s by lack of communication and refusing to give too much away. But then the book slowly evolves into a focus on the importance of communication and how we communicate with one another to show who we are. Ana fears rejection, so she optimizes research and knowledge to gain control so she can avoid any rejection in her relationship.
This is a spoiler, so please feel free to skip this paragraph, but when the ending is revealed of Evan’s character’s transgressions, instead of sticking around to talk and communicate, Ana makes the choice to leave without any conversation and never texts Evan back or picks up his calls. Her silence is communication enough, and the power that displays is immense. Ana gains awareness in this moment of the importance of protecting herself and I found that scene powerful and the first time Ana truly has control over her insecurities.
“My pledge for not transforming had been both a failure and a success. A success in the sense that I had no pursued change superficially, and a failure in the sense that, of course, change had happened anyway …” Ana reflects as the chapter of her life including Evan comes to a close. Change is inevitable, and change is paramount in all relationships as we evolve. But we don’t need to change ourselves or feel the need to evolve into a better version just because a breakup signifies rejection. Not all breakups end in rejection, but sometimes they end so we can grow and relax into our own skin.
As much as this book was a deep dive into how we view ourselves within relationships, I loved the consistent undertone of the importance of our relationship with ourself and the importance of spending time with ourselves to better understand who we are when we aren’t performing. The comparison between rejection and authenticity, or trying to protect our true selves from others by never fully showing our cards is something we deal with every day in small and large doses with everyone we interact with. Ana’s take on this subject, and in extension, Amy Taylor’s take, was refreshing and vulnerable which I found made this book all the more endearing to read.
Review: Book Hoes Who Brunch Book Club
Book club’s attitude towards Seach History was resoundingly positive. The average rating was around 3.5-4 stars, if we had to place it on a scale. A few gave 2 stars, and a few gave 5 stars. But overall, everyone enjoyed it.
We all agreed this book was not what we were expecting. We were expecting something off the rails insane like A Novel Obsession where the main protagonist, clearly unreliable, takes us on a journey of discomfort and “… girl, why?” vibes. With the little nugget of information on Emily’s death being that it was a hit-and-run a few of us all had the same thought wondering if it was Evan who had killed her. Lol at our brains. We kept expecting the sinister, but instead we got the sincere.
Book club attendees spoke on how they appreciated the “relationship” between Ana and Emily, and how relatable it was to sometimes seek out comparisons and information out of insecurity. I was reminded of a paragraph in the book towards the end where Ana reflects on her journey trying to understand Emily:
“In some ways she [Emily] represented the version of myself I envisioned when I imagined myself free of all my flaws; a person who is loved unconditionally. That was, of course, an image I’d built based on the foundation of assumptions. It was not the whole truth. I’d held Emily up as this idea of perfection, and yet, she’d also been rejected and hurt. That was evidence enough or me to conclude that none of this was personal. There was nothing, no carving of the self, no removal of perceived flaws, that would truly protect me from rejection.” (pg. 262)
Who among us hasn’t stalked someone on social media to feel closer to them or to try and understand them on a more personal level. If Josh Hutcherson was on Instagram other than his one recent post, I’d be stalking him all the time.
Our book club members noted that Ana didn’t seem to feel embarrassed by her obsession with social media, but saw it more as a tool that everyone uses. But Ana was aware that she had a darker form of love for social media when she started to feel an compulsive need to look at Emily’s feed even though she knew every photo and had seen it all before.
We spoke about the pacing of the book, which felt disjointed and wonky at times. But we also noted that it could have potentially been on purpose considering Ana only felt the need to express her emotions and thoughts when she was around Evan or thinking of Evan, and considering they initially were touch and go with shitty texting and bad communication, it would make sense that Ana felt her own story was disjointed.
We all agreed we’d love to read more from this author and that for a debut novel there was a lot of compelling thought and emotion that kept us going. The beginning really forces you to keep reading and there was nothing more uncomfortable than those first few pages. But it set the tone of a book we weren’t expecting but all ended up endearing.
The US cover for Search History is of Ana giving a faceless Evan a hug (you only see the back of his head) while she’s holding her phone in the other hand and her face is illuminated by the screen. It’s almost reminiscent of the current cartoon cover craze happening in the romance world, and the tone of the cover threw us off. That bitch Trojan Horsed us. Something we were expecting to be fluffier and more silly goofy ended up hitting us in the feels.
One question posed by one of our book club members, Emily (no relation to dead girlfriend Emily), was, “Do you think at some point this book will be dated by its usage of social media?”
The book mentions Facebook and Instagram, with Emily’s Instagram feed almost acting as its own character.
“No,” I said quickly, “Because she’s dead.”
Dead ex-girlfriend Emily can no longer represent herself or post anything further, which perpetuates this memorial to her character on her deadlocked Instagram page. Because Emily will no longer be able to create new accounts or keep up with her feeds, the limitations of social media that Ana sometimes felt where she couldn’t find any further connections to photos of Emily or information regarding her life posed an extra layer to the story.
Where book club felt themselves wanting in Search History was in Ana’s relationship with her parents, and a bit more backstory on Ana’s professional life. The scenes of Ana’s work life were wildly, uncomfortably, realistic. There are a few moments where Ana has to come to terms with the inequality of men and women in the workplace and how that trickles into real life. It was another comparison Ana used to market her worth and even prompts Ana to visit Emily’s old workplace to gain a better understanding of how Emily might have felt as a working woman.
It was noted too in book club that Evan’s lack of emotional intelligence to have a conversation with Ana about Emily (even when Ana came to him in a reasonable way to say she’s always there if he needs to talk) is what perpetuated Ana to think she was maybe the crazy one and utilize her social media obsession even more. At one point in book club the statement was made that we “felt like we didn’t even know anything about Evan.”
It was giving she’s Barbie and he’s just Ken, but in a sort of “she’s a fully formed human woman with emotions and flaws, and he’s just emotionally unintelligent and kind of a dick when you think about it?”
All this to say, we loved Search History. This book surprised us and made us reflect. We all agreed Ana would benefit from therapy, but her own self-awareness and then rejection of making changes she knew she needed to make felt realistic and relatable as someone in a transitionary period in their life. Ana, you crazy, but we see you.
Thanks for reading this book club review! You can find Search History at your favorite, local independent bookstores or at your local library. Amy Taylor is an Australian writer based in Naarm/Melbourne. Search History is her debut novel and according to her profile on Penguin Random House, she is working on her next! I, for one, look forward to reading it.
Book Hoes Who Brunch book club’s next book is Something About Her by Clementine Taylor. We’ll be meeting on Saturday, January 6th. Tickets are currently sold out.