Friend Me by Sheila M. Averbuch

Synopsis:

Roisin hasn't made a single friend since moving from Ireland to Massachusetts. In fact, she is falling apart under constant abuse from a school bully, Zara. Zara torments Roisin in person and on social media. She makes Roisin the laughingstock of the whole school.

Roisin feels utterly alone… until she bonds with Haley online. Finally there's someone who gets her. Haley is smart, strong, and shares anti-mean-girl memes that make Roisin laugh. Together, they are able to imagine what life could look like without Zara. Haley quickly becomes Roisin's lifeline.

Then Zara has a painful accident, police investigate, and Roisin panics. Could her chats with Haley look incriminating?

Roisin wants Haley to delete her copies of their messages, but when she tries to meet Haley in person, she can't find her anywhere. What's going on? Her best friend would never have lied to her, right? Or is Haley not who she says she is…

Friend Me was a surprising read. Partly because I didn’t read the synopsis before stating the book, and didn’t realise it was a thriller, and partly because the I didn’t expect this ending (although this could be somewhat due to not reading the synopsis too). We can probably guess the ending if we read the synopsis.

The story starts off with Rosin’s interaction with her brother, and their household AI, Jeeves. Don’t worry, my favourite AI is still JARVIS 😊 Her problems with Zara is slightly described here, a little peek into Rosin’s repellant attitude towards this girl. What I love here is the obvious rapport and comfort Rosin draws from her brother, and how they obviously care about each other. Not only that, they are also very sure of each other’s care for themselves as well, and that is something not many stories offer. We so often see characters being torn apart due to misunderstandings or insecurity, and it seems unlikely in this particular book.

Averbuch depicted a real and believable situation in a high school where one particular student is targeted, especially due to their differences. In Rosin’s situation, it was due to her accent and heritage. I never understood it, but children can be so cruel at times. They do all sorts of mean things to their peers, and some of them are so so ridiculous! Yet, at the same time, the victims themselves get affected by it all and all I feel is angry and frustrated on their behalf. What makes me really tick is how everyone is just telling the victim to laugh it off! I am of the opinion that if you have made someone uncomfortable, then it is not a joke, but an action that has hurt someone. That is not to say the receiver of the joke cannot take the joke, they just have a different tolerance, or views, of the same thing. That doesn’t mean they’re odd! That just means they’re human!

Haley was a surprise and a breath of fresh air, both for Rosin and for me as the reader. Someone who understands! Someone who Rosin can talk to! At the same time, I cannot help but keep expecting this new online friend to turn out to be someone entirely different. At this point, I had a couple of guesses. Someone preying on little girls on random, or Zara’s father who was briefly mentioned. Well…turned out it was a mutant Haley with Jeeves and Taiko infused in it. At some point, I even guessed that Zara was Haley. Believe me, I thought I was crazy too. That was a stupid guess.

Haley in this book represented, for me, the importance to acknowledge that non-human lifeforms can have feelings too. Especially if you allow it to learn. Advances of technology are moving towards emulating human emotions, why do we not expect those technology to learn and develop them as well? We’ve created HAL, Terminator, SKYNET, and if they ever come to life, at the very least, we should learn to be friendly, patient, and very, very wary of their intelligence.

In some ways, I feel like I’m so childish as well. I felt so indignant when Rosin’s brother asked why he was not informed of Rosin’s problems, that it had to escalate to such extent. And even though in Averbuch’s prose, the two girls did emphasize that Michael laughed at Rosin, and that lost her trust, I felt it wasn’t given as much credit towards pushing Rosin to this situation. As the person she was most comfortable with talking about her problems, Michael had failed to give Rosin the help she needed, and that was when she tried to solve the problem herself! I feel like we need to make it clear that if any of your family members are bothered by any words or actions taken against them, then it is inappropriate and unreasonable to ask them to be alright with whatever they are facing right then.

Lastly, I wanted to say how social media had grown over the past year, especially during the Covid-19 situation. Commenting on stranger’s actions online and criticizing them can be so harmful and hurtful, and we are all educated on cyberbullying. I wish everyone would look into their own hearts, and take a look at what you think you might feel if you were on the other side of cyberbullying, and try to empathise with them. In some ways, cyberbullying has evolved to an extent where it can spread and reach the real world too. Even if we decide to escape the situation by throwing our phone into the sea, people around you would still see what you don’t want to see, and people around you would definitely remind you of it!

Of course, being able to spot these victims and lending a hand is as important as the victim voicing out. In Friend Me, Jors had access to the conversations between Haley and Rosin, could he have not known of all the troubles Rosin had been having at school. On another hand, couldn’t he tell Rosin was underage? (It is still possible he never looked at the conversations though hahahahaha)

All in all, the ratings are:

4/5