THE HATERS by Robyn Harding

“Swirling the ice in my glass, I see that it’s half empty. Or is it half full? I try to look at my status through an optimistic lens.”

After years of multiple rejections, high school teacher Camryn Lane finds a publisher for her first novel – Burnt Orchid –a story about young street people who scrabble a living doing whatever they have to, in order to feed and clothe themselves…with enough left over to score a hit or three to block unwanted memories.

Even though Lane insists none of her novel’s characters are based on the lives of her high school students, it seems a whole swath of them don’t believe what their teacher is saying.

Adding to the milieu of complaints made about Lane on the high school’s snitch line, is the undercurrent of treachery pulsing just below the surface in Lane’s inner circle. There’s Theo, Lane’s younger-by-nine-years-boyfriend, (GO Lane!); her rebellious teenage daughter Liza, who detests her mother’s public persona; and Adrian, her ex, who is now hooked up with a trophy bitch wife.

Not to mention the exponential surge of tech savvy “Haters” who come out of nowhere and seem to have nothing better to do than post destructive comments about the kinds of lewdly sexual acts they infer Lane does behind closed doors to impressionable young people.

From there, the roller coaster dips and doodles that Harding, with the delicious twists and turns she hits readers with, is such that if you are a wig-wearing or baseball cap devotee, you’ll need to hold tight to said head gear in order to land Harding’s masterpiece all in one piece.

The only thing that I hated about “The Haters” was page 337 – which as you might guess is the end of this tumultuous fast-paced thriller in which nobody and everybody is, or is not, what they seem.

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