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A bitingly sharp and darkly humorous debut novel exploring millennial wedding culture, class, and relationships, all filtered through the ever-present lens of social media.
In an opulent honeymoon suite in Rhode Island’s most desirable wedding venue, 29-year-old Callie Holt is spending her wedding night lying in a bathtub shoveling down a pizza; her expensive white dress now splattered with sauce and her groom passed out in the next room. With her seven-hour-old marriage already imploded, Callie turns to the place of record – her phone – sifting through the photographic evidence of the past year to pinpoint where it all went wrong.
Over the course of one wedding-filled year, long-simmering secrets and resentments will come bubbling to the surface, leading to a reckoning that will strip Callie and everyone around her down to their most gruesomely real, filter-free selves. As Callie attends wedding after wedding, getting tagged in post after post, she begins to contemplate—and actualize through her own art—the gulf between the true selves of the people around her and the selves they present on their screens.
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Praise for Social Engagement
NAMED A BEST SUMMER BEACH READ BY VOGUE, HARPER’S BAZAAR,
theSKIMM, KATIE COURIC MEDIA, NEW YORK POST
NAMED A MOST ANTICIPATED BOOK OF THE SPRING BY BUZZFEED
NAMED A MOST ANTICIPATED BOOK OF MAY BY BOOKSHOP.ORG AND ZIBBY OWENS
“A uniquely 21st-century mystery that runs with a pretty clever conceit, a detective story using the detritus of social media as the clues they are.”―Buzzfeed
“Smart and appealing …the author portrays the book’s multifaceted characters with honesty and tenderness, especially as events build toward a climactic wedding-night confrontation. Readers will enjoy this heartfelt story.”—Publisher’s Weekly
“I picked up Social Engagement to read one chapter and didn’t put it down until I finished it later that night. This novel is a masterful and sharp exploration of friendship, family, class, and social media. Forrey’s debut is twisty and absorbing, full of family secrets and millennial weddings, and you won’t want to miss it!” ―Jennifer Close, bestselling author of Girls in White Dresses and Marrying the Ketchups
“A witty and addictive behind-the-scenes account of today’s highly curated and hashtagged wedding world. Clear your weekend and prepare to fall in love with this delicious debut.” ―Lauren Weisberger, bestselling author of The Devil Wears Prada and Where the Grass is Green and the Girls are Pretty
“A bitingly funny, acutely self-aware coming-of-age story about growing up on the edge of the inside, close enough to feel the allure of money and power but not enough to be stupefied or protected by it. A wedding novel that begins after the glass is broken and the wedding dress is stained, I raced through it to find out how the champagne-drenched pieces would come together.” ―Isabel Kaplan, author of NSFW
“In clever, taut prose exploring our obsession with the tiny screens that shape our stories, Social Engagement somehow feels both modern and timeless—in exposing the ugly (yet universal) parts of ourselves we prefer to hide, Forrey reveals the ways in which we try, and try again, to love ourselves—and other people—properly. A thought-provoking debut with an unsettlingly relatable protagonist you’ll wish you could include in your group chat.” ―Caitlin Barasch, author of A Novel Obsession
“Forrey’s gift for making the everyday feel compelling shines throughout… An absorbing novel about the trials of navigating adulthood.” ―Kirkus Reviews