Liked

Some people grow up learning how to be real. Others grow up learning how to be liked.

Jersey Mau is seventeen, depressed, and eats dinner alone in a mansion most nights--the kind of detail that should come with a violin score but mostly just comes with cold pad thai.

When a fading Hollywood agent talks her into posting on TikTok, Jersey does the one thing the influencer industry is not prepared for: she tells the truth. About her depression. About loneliness. About what it actually feels like to be a teenager in the twenty-first century.

The video explodes. So does everything else. An anonymous account sets out to destroy her. Veronica--a beauty influencer with ten million followers and a flawless life--decides Jersey is a threat. And the old agent who found her, running low on reasons to keep going himself, becomes the only person she can actually reach.

Set in 2018 Los Angeles, Liked follows three lives buckling under the weight of being seen--one invisible, one watching, one too visible, none of them truly known. Sharp, darkly-funny, and unexpectedly tender, it's a coming-of-age novel about the distance between being liked and being understood.

"Lilting prose, searing insight, and jaded wisdom render White's melancholy characters fascinating." - BookLife, Editors Pick

Readers will find:

• Contemporary fiction set in 2018 Los Angeles
• Mental health written by a Licensed Mental Health Therapist
• Influencer culture written by a social media influencer/ content creator
• An unlikely cross-generational friendship at its core
• Social issues such as war/ LGBT/ addition/ love/ relationships/ attachment and friendships

For readers of:

Dolly Alderton, Sally Rooney, Patricia Lockwood and Eric Smith.

Author Bio:

Jessa White is a Licensed Mental Health Counselor and creator whose work lives at the intersection of mental health, identity, and the cost of living online. She has a combined audience of more than 1.5 million across Instagram and TikTok as @therapyjessaofficial.