Rating: 2.5 stars

‘Allow Me to Introduce Myself’ by Onyi Nwabineli is written from the perspective of Anuri, a young adult woman who was forced into becoming a child social media influencer by her fame and money-driven stepmom. It tackles themes of broken family relations, struggles with mental health and unhealthy coping mechanisms such as alcoholism.

The main characters are her father Nkem, stepmother Ophelia, and half-sister Noelee. Other prominent supporting characters include her best friends Simi and Loki, maternal grandparents, and paternal aunt.

‘Allow Me to Introduce Myself’ is another book I bought on a whim because it seemed to tackle a timely and relevant discussion about the impact of social media fame on unconsenting children. I, like many of you, am chronically online and am very much aware of what is happening in the content creation space. Influencers, whether adult or young, are the new “celebrities” and there’s no escaping them.

Therefore it only made sense for me to pick up this book, because I was interested to hear from the perspective of a former social media influencer and the conversations they have internally and in their circle. Like celebrities, influencers and social media influencers are mysterious- we know about them and what they choose to show us, their lives are filtered and edited and so in getting this book, part of me hoped to get some insight into their daily lived realities.

Before penning this book, Nwabineli was sitting on five stars. However, it was a miss. I ended up giving the book 2.5 stars.

Here’s why:

#1. Characters: The author had too many characters, most of which had mini storylines irrelevant to the main character’s story. Anuri’s story feels like a short one in a book of many other narratives about Ophelia’s parents, Simi, Loki, Christian, Simi’s boyfriend Abe etc. Secondly, she could have done without these many characters. The strength of this book could have been on Anuri, Ophelia, Nkem and Noelle. Brief mentions of her friends, therapist, and lawyer would have been fine depending on how she weaves them in.

#2. Confusing language: The author seems to be trying too hard to sound smart or funny by using overly flowery language. This is confusing and often impossible to follow. The book is 313 pages long and yet I skipped through a lot of text that I couldn’t understand. There were too many laughable quotes, it’s not even funny. The author danced around what she purported to be the main story: a young adult robbed of her childhood and exploited into becoming a social media star by Ophelia and her enabler, Nkem.

#3. The book could have been a brilliant conversation starter about child social media stars, their exploitation, the laws that should exist to protect them and the impact of parasocial relationships that former child social media stars may tend to fall into. It could have raised the alarm about the importance of responsible and intentional parenting and the dangers of social media on young users.

#4. Not much on Noelle: One of Anuri’s main concerns was that she wanted to protect her younger sister from her mother and yet, the author doesn’t say much about the kind of content Ophelia posted about Anuri. She could have delved deeper into how she was affected by being a public figure and Ophelia’s blindness to this.

The book was a great attempt to address what I believe to be a scourge of children who are exploited into becoming social media famous. However, the book was very unpleasant to read.