The Bookish Mindset

Overview:

Title: Every Smile You Fake
Author: Dorothy Koomson
Published: February 2024
Genre: Thriller
Themes: Radicalisation, Incel Culture, Social Media

One sentence summary: Finding a child in the back of her car is about to be Kez’s smallest problem as pieces of this puzzle begin to slot into place.

One sentence review: Utterly addictive and totally brilliant.

Review:

When Kez finds a child on her backseat with a note from its mother asking not to be found, she can’t help but jump into action. And the pieces of this twisted start to come together? There is nothing getting in her way to help the ones she loves. 

For my first proper dip into the genre, I feel like I’ve set the bar pretty high! 

I really enjoyed this one, there was just so much good stuff in here. I loved humour interlaced with some incredibly serious work. I loved the lightness and care in the relationships. I loved the depth. There was so much going on but I wasn’t confused once, the delivery was spot on for me. 

There’s some brilliant themes covered both sensitively and cleverly – there’s incel culture and the radicalisation of men, there’s AI manipulation and coercion and the plights of social media. It’s a brilliant mix that often felt too close to reality. 

It was gripping and entertaining and I’m excited to read more of Koomson’s backlog for sure. 

Have you read this one yet? 

If you’d like to get yourself a copy, you can support local bookshops and my work while doing so on Bookshop.org with this link here.

If you like what you’ve read and would like to access more content, I’d love if you could take a look at my patreon and consider supporting my content on there too. You can also find more content on my Instagram here.

And don’t forget to check out my other blogs and reviews – you can find books with similar themes in the same folder link below, or click back onto blogs to see the whole offering.

Last updated 15/10/2025