Maree Spratt
The Followers
Allen & Unwin, 2026
The Followers is a sharp debut that explores themes of peer pressure, girlhood, identity, social capital, and how schoolyard dynamics translate to social media.
Friendship with Lacey felt like a warm hand pressing very tightly against my throat. The difficulty breathing felt better than the chill of abandonment that overcame me every time she would, just for a second, relax the pressure.
Beautiful, manipulative Lacey is a lifestyle influencer turned bestselling author who preaches self-love and body confidence to her million followers.
But one of those followers is Teresa. She remembers Lacey as a prepubescent mean girl who kept the loyal members of her gang—Teresa included—on a short leash. Twenty years later, she watches Lacey from afar with the ghost of her younger self and a copy of Lacey's new self-help book for company. While Lacey seems to have rebranding down to an art form, Teresa can't shake their past so easily.
The Followers is a keenly observed and darkly funny exploration of coming of age in the social media era, and how the children we were shape the adults we become.
“I could not put this book down: Maree Spratt’s characters gripped me from the first sentence. The Followers is a sophisticated and serious satire, showing the machinations of the minds of young pre-teen girls with the depth they so deserve, but rarely get, in literature.”
About the Author
Maree Spratt grew up in Inala, Brisbane. She began her career teaching English and Legal Studies in Moranbah, a small mining town in Central Queensland. For the past eight years she has educated students at a range of national cultural institutions, including National Archives and Parliament House. The Followers is her debut novel. She chipped away at it for close to fifteen years and hopes to spend a little less time on her next book. Earlier versions were shortlisted for The Australian / Vogels Literary Award 2020 and the Viva La Novella Prize in 2017. Her short fiction has been published in The Big Issue, One Book Many Brisbanes, Mascara Literary Review, and Award-Winning Australian Writing. She lives in Canberra with her husband and their two young sons.
