ARC Review: No Filter and Other Lies by Crystal Maldonado

You should know, right now, that I’m a liar.

They’re usually little lies. Tiny lies. Baby lies. Not so much lies as lie adjacent.

But they’re still lies.

Twenty one-year-old Max Monroe has it all: beauty, friends, and a glittering life filled with adventure. With tons of followers on Instagram, her picture-perfect existence seems eminently enviable.

Except it’s all fake.

Max is actually 16-year-old Kat Sanchez, a quiet and sarcastic teenager living in drab Bakersfield, California. Nothing glamorous in her existence–just sprawl, bad house parties, a crap school year, and the awkwardness of dealing with her best friend Hari’s unrequited love. But while Kat’s life is far from perfect, she thrives as Max: doling out advice, sharing beautiful photos, networking with famous influencers, even making a real friend in a follower named Elena. The closer Elena and “Max” get–texting, Snapping, and even calling–the more Kat feels she has to keep up the facade.

But when one of Max’s posts goes ultra-viral and gets back to the very person she’s been stealing photos from, her entire world – real and fake — comes crashing down around her. She has to figure out a way to get herself out of the huge web of lies she’s created without hurting the people she loves.

But it might already be too late.

• Title: No Filter and Other Lies
• Author:  Crystal Maldonado
• Publisher: Holiday House
• Publication Date: February 1st, 2022
• Genre: Comtemporary, Romance
• Source: Publishers (ARC provided by Holidayy House in exchange for an honest review)
• Targeted Age Range: Young Adult
• Content Warnings: Fatphobia + fat jokes, strained familial relationships, mentions of death and cancer, anxiety, underage drinking, physical fight, vomit, depression, catfishing, anxiety attack, mention of getting pulled over by the police
• Rating: ★★★★✩

Earlier this year, Crystal Maldonado released her debut novel, Fat Chance, Charlie Vega – and I absolutely loved it (read my full review here). Because that story resonated so deeply with me, I had high expectations for her second novel, No Filter and Other Lies. Luckily, those expectations were met!

Sixteen-year-old Kat Sanchez has a good life. She’s got a solid (and very sarcastic) group of friends. Her grandparents are loving and supportive in everything that she does. She’s an amazing photographer and has an awesome volunteer gig at her local animal shelter One Fur All. But, a huge part of her life is a lie. To most people, she lives with her parents and her younger brother, Leo, which is shown through the photos that her mother posts on Facebook presenting them as the perfect family unit. In reality, Kat lives with her grandparents and only sees her parents and brother once a week at family dinners. 

Dissatisfied with the lack of engagement on her personal photography Instagram account, Kat decides to use the photos that she’s taken of her (beautifully thin and white) friend to create a profile for 21-year-old Max Monroe. Max has it all. She’s beautiful, has the perfect online aesthetic, tons of followers and most importantly, people care about what she has to say – all the things that Kat wishes she had. The lie seems harmless enough, her friend isn’t on social media anymore so it’s not like she’ll find the account. Kat also uses Max’s account to help the dogs at the shelter get adopted, so what’s the harm? When Kat starts falling for a girl that she’s talking to online as Max, things get more complicated. Especially when one of Max’s posts goes viral and her friend finds out about the fake account.

My favorite thing about Maldonado’s works is that she writes messy protagonists; she does not write “Mary Sue” characters. All of her characters are flawed and nuanced. They make mistakes and learn from them, and will continue to make mistakes after that because that’s what humans do and I find that much more interesting than “perfect” characters. There were so many things I loved about Kat – I loved her passion for photography and animals, and how much she loves her grandparents. She has a lot of wonderful qualities, but for each of her wonderful qualities, she has some flaws. One of her big flaws, which really is the catalyst for the situations in this book, is her need for outside validation. 

Kat works hard to create the perfect online aesthetic through her Instagram account, but even though she spends hours finding the perfect shot and editing her photos, engagement is low which obviously discourages her. Especially when her (male) friends post an unfiltered selfie and get hundreds of likes within minutes. Understandably so, this lack of engagement and validation from the Instagram community leads Kat to feel alone and like her voice doesn’t matter. That lack of validation and feeling of isolation leads her to create the Max account, and suddenly, now that the person speaking her words has a beautiful, thin, and white face, people care and want to listen. 

Once people are finally listening to what Kat has to say and appreciating her photography, she becomes fully addicted. She’s constantly checking for likes and followers, she neglects her friends and other obligations in order to perfect the aesthetic she has created as Max. She really falls into the harmful side of social media where the number of comments and likes you receive is equivalent to your worth – which she, luckily, gets called out on. I also really appreciated that another one of the characters was so open about the harm that social media caused them and that they decided to completely remove themselves from platforms in order to prioritize their mental health. As much as we all love being able to connect with people through social media, it should never come at the expense of our personal wellbeing, and I think it was really important that it was addressed in the book, seeing as social media is at the center of the story.

Without giving away the ending, I will say that I’m so happy with how the fallout of Kat using her friend’s photos to create an online persona was handled. I think that it was handled in a way that felt realistic from all parties, and I do think that Kat learned her lesson. It’s also very important to me that Kat’s apology was exactly that, an apology. She explained why she did what she did, recognized that it was wrong and took ownership of her choices and mistakes, and did not once try to invalidate the other person’s feelings. There were many ways that the story could’ve ended, and I’m very happy that Maldonado chose the ending that she did.

Another thing that I thought was done extremely well were the complicated family dynamics. Kat had such a beautiful relationship with her grandparents that really is best described as warm and loving, which is such a contrast to her relationships with her parents that, in comparison, is cold and detached. A huge part of the book is Kat working through her feelings of abandonment that I thought was done so beautifully, and I really appreciated the way that Kat was able to confront her parents about how she was feeling. 

In my opinion, Maldonado once again hit it out of the park with a story that tackles important topics but doesn’t come off as preachy or trite. With this book, Maldonado has cemented herself as one of my go-to authors. No Filter and Other Lies is set to release in February of 2022 and I can’t wait for everyone to read it.

Links for No Filter and Other Lies: Goodreads | TheStoryGraph | Bookshop | IndieBound