Book #4: What It Seems, Emily Bleeker

About the book: 

Adopted by her controlling foster mother at the age of eight, twenty-year-old Tara has seen little of the outside world. Lonely, punished for the slightest offense, her only distraction comes from watching the Feely family’s online videos. They’re an affectionate vlogging quintet and an internet sensation. Most important, they are Tara’s mental refuge. Then the opportunity arises for them to be something more. When Tara accepts an internship with the close-knit clan, they’re her escape.

Daring to run away, and defying Mother’s rules, Tara is welcomed into the loving fold. But the more Tara gets to know them, the more she realizes that not everything is as it seems. As secrets slowly surface, the image of the perfect family begins to crack. For Tara, it’s another trap.

To claim a life of her own, she’ll need a new escape plan. Because as the show’s popularity explodes, reaching even more fascinated viewers, Tara can’t shake the feeling that Mother is among their ranks. She’s watching. She’s waiting. She’ll never let her go.

 Group Discussion Questions: 

• Tara is controlled by Mother’s extreme rules and punishments. Do you think she should have or could have left Mother sooner? Do you think at twenty years old, she should take more responsibility for her life? Why or why not?
• Tara uses fantasy in her life to make her day to day world more bearable. She uses the escape of her dolls and the vlogging families she follows on YouTube. What are some ways that Tara’s experience with numbing or distraction are found in real-life situations that may be less extreme than hers? 
• The Feely Family acts like a loving family in their online videos but have the same issues that burden most homes off screen. It is possible to escape “fake” happiness on line? What are the benefits or dangers of such misrepresentations? 
• Why do you think Stan and Alyssa Feely wanted to hire Tara/Angela as their intern when they had so many other options? Were their original intentions pure? 
• Henry is an off-screen member of the Feely family. Why do you think he choose not to participate on screen with the rest of the family? Why do you think he stays with the family business when he has so many other options? 
• Tara/Angela is afraid to be seen in more ways than one. Why do you think she keeps up the façade that she is pregnant? Why do you think she would rather hide than ask for help? How are other members of the Feely family also hiding? 
• In what ways do Tara and Henry’s relationships with their overbearing parent parallel? In what ways are they both “trapped”? 
• In the final chapter of WHAT IT SEEMS, Tara/Angela seems to be on her way to the “normal” life she craved but in what ways is that also not “what it seems”? As a long-term victim of trauma, what kind of lingering issues do you think she will carry with her throughout her life, relationships and family? 
• If you could’ve given Tara one piece of advice in the first chapter of What It Seems, what would it be?