Liann Zhang's time as an influencer inspired her twin-swapping, horror-infused novel
The Canadian author discussed novel Julie Chan Is Dead on Bookends with Mattea Roach
When Liann Zhang was in high school, she became an accidental influencer.
Dealing with cystic acne, she started posting about the skincare products she was using and accumulated over 20,000 followers on Instagram.
Soon, she was being sent PR packages, signing sponsorship deals and going to brand events. She was also included in private group chats where influencers talked about the industry — and was shocked by the level of entitlement that she found behind closed doors.
"It was just kind of crazy to see because you'd go onto their feed and it would be like perfect, curated. They're so peaceful, they seem so kind," she said on Bookends with Mattea Roach.
"And then just one tab away in the private messaging, it's this whole other personality."
These experiences inspired Zhang's debut novel Julie Chan Is Dead, which follows the titular character as she takes over the life of her mega-influencer, estranged twin Chloe after she mysteriously dies.
The Canadian author, who splits her time between Vancouver and Toronto, joined Roach on Bookends to discuss privilege in Julie Chan Is Dead, questionable decisions and her love-hate relationship with the Internet.
Mattea Roach: The inspiration for Julie Chan Is Dead is from these experiences that you had in the smaller-time influencing world. But it's also a thriller suspense novel. It begins with this intense line: "One thing needs to be made clear. I did not kill my twin sister." What inspired you to have that open this novel?
Liann Zhang: I like the idea that I can spoil it at the beginning because it kind of does wrap around. That was the main reason.
But at the same time, it gives a vibe of if you're on Tiktok and they give you the most clickbaity, most sensational line there is, and then you go backwards and they tell you the story leading up to it. I just want to grab somebody's attention immediately and have them want to flip to the next page.
When we meet Julie at the start of the novel, she's estranged from her sister, Chloe. Can you tell us a little bit about these two characters and how they came to be in this situation?
So a core theme of the book is really the sense of privilege. So it's a very interesting idea to take these twins who technically grew up in the exact same environment. They were raised with the same parents. They're biologically very, very similar. They are identical twins. And then seeing them separated and then placed into these different privileged situations.
Chloe, who is the one that grows up to be an influencer, is adopted by a very wealthy white family and kind of gets access to all that privilege and all that wealth versus Julie is the character that we follow. She's not so lucky. She gets adopted by an aunt who is not very nice and she doesn't have nearly as much privilege and as much access to anything as Chloe.
It was interesting to examine how even though they're kind of the same person, they can grow up to be so different.- Liann Zhang
It was interesting to examine how even though they're kind of the same person, they can grow up to be so different. It was really a question of how much of this, not just influencing, but the social dynamics and the power scheme, how much of it is really about the individual person versus their circumstances.
Julie makes a real split-second decision to take over her sister's life. It's not something that's calculated, it's actually spurred by her being mistaken for her sister. Why does she do this?
I always found that choice very interesting because I feel like in so many books, the main character makes a bad decision for a very noble reason. You see it all the time where it's like, "Oh, I need to buy medicine for my sister," or there's some type of reason why they're doing something bad.
But for Julie, it truly is just selfish reasoning. It's literally just because she feels entitled to what she didn't have and she feels this extreme sense of envy. She spent so much of her time watching her twin's content and feeling like there's this sense where she should have been in that position. She doesn't feel like it's fair for someone to have grown up in such a similar way to have so much more than she did.
So in that moment, she kind of just lets all of those angry and entitled and envious emotions take over her.
You've written before that Julie Chan Is Dead is actually your "love-hate" letter to social media. Can you tell me a bit more about that?
I can't even say I don't love social media because chances are as soon as I get out of this room, I'm going to whip out my phone and then start scrolling. So at the end of the day, I'm always on social media, even though I can actively recognize that it's probably destroying my brain and in some ways.
But I grew up with it and it's provided me so much joy and so much connection, really. Even with connecting to writers, I found so many writer friends online. Before that, there were different communities that I was a part of. So there is a lot of greatness to come with social media and that's the love aspect of it.
At the end of the day, you can't take social media away from me, I'm always going to go back to it.- Liann Zhang
The hate aspect is almost cognitive dissonance where I can recognize that it's actively doing bad things to the world, to my mind, to how we connect with each other. But at the end of the day, you can't take social media away from me, I'm always going to go back to it. It's kind of like a toxic relationship.
What did you find the most fun about writing this book? Was it enjoyable for you to put this out into the world?
It absolutely was. I loved every second of it. This was one of the first books that I wrote in this specific voice and I think it's part of the reason why I really flew through writing it.
It's awful to say because Julie is kind of a really mean, vindictive, terrible person, but in some ways she is my voice in the fact that she's like a very Gen Z young voice. She's cynical about being online, but also craves it deeply. It was just so much fun writing my grievances with social media, but in this form and letting it go absolutely wild.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity. It was produced by Talia Kliot and edited by Barb Carey and Ailey Yamamoto.
