If You're Seeing This, It's Meant for You - by Leigh Stein (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

Fates collide after a tarot influencer disappears from a decaying Hollywood mansion in this unnerving gothic mystery and "incisive social satire" (Town & Country) from the acclaimed author of Self Care.

"Leigh Stein's work provokes you like the most unsettling clip you've ever seen on a screen--and you won't be able to look away."--Julia Phillips, bestselling author of Bear

After her boyfriend dumps her in a Reddit post, unemployed thirty-nine-year-old Dayna accepts an unusual opportunity from a man she stopped speaking to twenty years ago: If Dayna can help Craig transform his crumbling mansion into a successful hype house of influencers, he can restore his birthright to its former glory, and she can bring her career back from the dead.

But missing from the mansion is Becca, an enigmatic tarot card reader who built a rabid fandom with her cryptic, soul-touching videos . . . and then vanished. With nineteen-year-old Olivia, the newest member of the hype house (and one of Becca's biggest fans), Dayna begins to build a social media campaign around Becca's disappearance that will catapult the creators to new heights of success. Too bad Craig forbids Dayna from pursuing the mystery at its heart.

As Olivia searches for traces of Becca in a labyrinthine house that seems intent on hiding its secrets, and Dayna becomes entangled with both Craig and Jake, the resident heartthrob and the last person to see Becca, the two women make a shocking discovery that will upend everything.

The internet: You may think you're inhabiting it, but is it really inhabiting you?

Review Quotes

"[An] incisive social satire . . . a funny, dark look at the new creator economy in a way only Leigh Stein can."--Town & Country, "The Must-Read Books of the Summer"

"Leigh Stein's work provokes you like the most unsettling clip you've ever seen on a screen--and you won't be able to look away."--Julia Phillips, author of Bear

"Leigh Stein is an absolute master at noticing and excavating meaning from corners of the internet that most people scroll past. In If You're Seeing This, It's Meant for You, she blends Gothic mystery with sharp cultural critique to reveal the strange, aching humanity behind the creator economy. This is a smart, funny, and incisive novel about fading relevance, digital reinvention, and the people addicted to making content even as it consumes them."--Andrew Boryga, author of Victim

"A masterpiece and laugh-out-loud funny . . . the first novel about TikTok that takes it seriously, in all its hideousness and brain rot . . . I'm obsessed with the fusion of Gothic creeping dread and the seductive allure of the algorithm. I loved this!"--Josh Lora (attellthebeees)

"In this hauntingly subversive novel, Leigh Stein summons Rebecca, Alice Liddell, and Francesca Woodman to brilliantly explore the cost of online fame for a generation raised on screens. I happily fell down the rabbit hole."--Betsy Lerner, author of Shred Sisters

"Gothic horror meets the glitz of 21st-century Los Angeles in this surreal and bingeable story. . . . Stein adeptly captures the messiness and contradictions of being human and creating content, portraying the blurred lines between reality and online personas and the unhinged emotional toil that creating such content can take."--Kirkus Reviews

About the Author

Leigh Stein is the author of six books, including the critically acclaimed satirical novel Self Care, and the creator of the Attention Economy newsletter on Substack. She has also written for the New York Times, the Washington Post, Allure, ELLE, Airmail, and The Cut.