Rating: ⭐⭐⭐.5
Published by: Bantam Books
Publication date: 29th January 2026
Content warnings: stalking, miscarriage, dementia

“You’re the love of her life. You just don’t know it yet…”

I am ashamed to admit that I picked up a proof of this at Theakston Crime Writing Festival in Harrogate last year and I’m only just getting around to reading it! (I am working on tackling the backlog, honest!) I fell in love with Tanya’s writing straight away; it’s witty and wonderful and engaging, but Esther was a character that I constantly wanted to slap some sense into 😅 Hopefully my review explains my reasoning! Very happy to be sharing my review for Esther is Now Following You by Tanya Sweeney!

About the book

Esther first sees Ted walking in a park in London. They lock eyes and for a fraction of a second, she feels something she’s never felt before.

She starts by reading up about his life in Canada and his work as an actor. Then she watches every interview with him online. It isn’t long before she’s joined Ted’s fan site online where her and the ‘Tedettes’ stalk his every move.

When Ted gets a new celebrity girlfriend, Esther decides that things have gone far enough. She leaves her husband, takes all their savings, and buys a one-way ticket to Canada.

After all, Ted might not know it yet, but they are meant to be together – he just needs a little bit of persuading…

The beginning

I went into this book expecting a fun, witty, quirky read right from the start, and boy do we get that. I really enjoyed Tanya’s writing! But maaan, what I was not prepared for were the emotional scenes so early on, the darkness that clouds Esther’s life at times. They seemed to punch me in the gut, but I felt every tiny detail made Esther come to life. We instantly know what makes her tick. What her personality is like, what her humour is like. The company she keeps, her marriage. How she’s living her life. Her hopes, her fears. This really was an exceptional opening to the book, the contrast of the light and dark elements of Esther’s life so bloody striking. After suffering a miscarriage and trying to get her life back to some kind of normality, she locks eyes with Ted on a walk in the park. She recognises Ted instantly. Because she’d been researching him and his life for something to do as she takes time away from life to get over her loss. But now he’s here. In front of her. And then he’s gone. What follows is a whirlwind of an obsession. She has to find out more…

“Maybe you’d look at my Facebook profile and think that life had turned out exactly as it was meant to for me. But the disquiet remains. The itch. The feeling I’m not quite doing life right.”

Esther begins to fantasise about Ted whenever she has a tough day, whenever things get a bit much. And the instant gratification makes her do more research, makes her find out everything she can about him. It all felt a bit disturbing if I’m if honest and it was slowly becoming apparent that she needed more support to help her understand and overcome her loss, without using this level of stalking to feel something. She stumbles across a Ted Levy fan page on Facebook, The Tedettes, more women just like her who track his every move, the news articles, the never-before-seen photos. There are even talks of going to Canada to find him. Really?! Part of me was fascinated by the extremeness of her actions, but there was a huge amount of sadness behind it all which took away the “fun” part of it for me. And the more serious she became about finding this man again, the more I wanted her to stop. At times, I struggled to find the motivation to read more of Esther’s futile attempts to get his attention, the back and forth with this and her crumbling marriage to Johnny.

The middle

After finding and chatting to Ted’s sister Naomi via email, a woman who works in grief counselling, Esther spontaneously books that trip to Toronto. Leaving Johnny behind, she knows this place is her calling. A fresh start. And not only that, she’d be lying if the pull of meeting Naomi to get into Ted’s life wasn’t enticing, that she wasn’t completely obsessed by the man at this point. She bonds with the woman over their shared grief and it did seem like they had a lot in common, but I couldn’t help but wonder if literally everything she did was for her own gain in the end, not that she really wanted Naomi’s friendship. I enjoyed digging a little deeper into Esther’s childhood, which kind of gave some answers as to why she’s been acting the way she has, doing what she’s been doing. I did find some of the pacing and structure a bit weird at some points; chunks of time just seemed to disappear, and sometimes the story went back and forth in time with no indication, leaving me wondering where the hell we were in the story. Maybe it’s just a me issue, but it really threw me off sometimes!

“I feel more alive than I have in absolute ages. It’s as if I’ve aged backwards. Setting fire to your stinking bin of a life and jumping into a whole new one. People really should do it more often.”

Nothing much happens other than the usual for Esther. She continues to stalk Ted Levy and those around him online. She controls the Tedettes when they get a bit heated over a new article or bit of gossip. She tries to stay at Naomi’s place for as long as possible until she can meet Ted properly. She fantasises about scenarios which, let’s face it, ain’t gonna happen. But she also begins to think of her old life, what she’s left behind, and this was something I thought about a lot too. I kind of missed it for her in a weird way! If I was Esther, by now I’d have realised what a huge mistake I’d made and be rushing home, but Esther is determined to make her life here work. And it isn’t long before she finds herself face to face with Ted’s model girlfriend. She’s getting closer to Ted, there’s no doubt about it, but the subtle hints to him being a guy that isn’t a very nice person in real life had me worried for Esther. How would she cope if he was the opposite to everything she’d dreamed? Would she spiral again? I was very concerned for her going into the ending, but also incredibly curious about the outcome.

The end

I was on Johnny’s side throughout the whole book and the more Esther pushes her old life away, the more she seemed to annoy me. She makes such stupid decisions, pushes new friends away (as well as old ones) to ensure she gets her time with Ted. And finally, by some miracle, she’s invited to an event where he will actually be in attendance. And then – to my absolute joy – the truth about what she’s doing is uncovered. Her cover is blown. As she’s forced on a flight back to London, with warnings to never come back, she has one last attempt at a life with Ted, pulling out of her flight at the very last minute. I was growing tired of her attempts at this point, but I was curious about what she would do here and whether she could keep all this away from Naomi. There was a nice layer of tension here and I was uncertain about how this could all end for her. If things didn’t work as she’d dreamed all this time, could she go back to her old life? To Johnny, who has started to move on since her abrupt departure? Only time would tell, I guess… I was starting to feel a bit stressy!

“In that moment I know. I have completely and utterly f*cked it. He walks away and it really does look as though he is striding away into a whole other life.”

As Esther learns potential new information about the kind of guy Ted could be, information that set all my alarm bells ringing, she STILL continues with all this. Just give him up, woman!! I wanted to give her a little shake to see sense, but things finally go the way they should in those final few chapters. The book ends as you’d expect it would really, and I didn’t feel much sympathy for her as things played out how I knew they would. It felt such a relief to get to this point. But despite all this and my frustrations at times, the ending really tugged at my heart in multiple different ways. Scenes with Esther’s mother were some of the most real, heartwrenching, raw scenes I’ve read in a long time. The epilogue made me finally feel good for Esther, how she’d finally got her life under control after such a horrific ordeal and it gave us (and Esther) the closure we needed. I kind of want another book about her future, a way for all my annoyance with Esther to simmer down a bit 😅 I know so many people loved this book and loved Esther as a character, so don’t take my annoyance of her as gospel!

Overall thoughts

Esther is Now Following You is far from the fun, light-hearted book I’d assumed it would be. Instead, it’s a wild exploration of extreme obsession, the negative side of fame and fandom, of how grief and loss can change a person, the intensities of hyper fixation and mental illness. It was deep and complex, with dark humour and an unhinged MC which made me completely understand why everyone has been talking about this book for months! After suffering a miscarriage, Esther changes. She switches off from her nice, normal, safe marriage to Johnny and becomes fixated on Ted Levy, an up-and-coming actor from Toronto. She locked eyes with him once in London, for the briefest of moments, but that’s all it took. She leaves her life behind and heads to Toronto… and her dreams of a life with the guy end up how you’d imagine. Oh, and let’s not forget the Tedettes. Other die-hard fans that would do anything to be in Esther’s shoes.

Tanya’s writing is bloody brilliant. It’s witty and raw and emotional, with such an engaging contrast between the light and the dark moments. As much as I wanted to give Esther a little slap to wake her up a bit at multiple points throughout this book, as much as so many of her actions frustrated me and stressed me out to hell, she really has stuck with me. She’s flawed, she has suffered so much pain and she didn’t know of any other way to deal with what happened to her. She’s just human. I laughed, I sweated, I rolled my eyes, I sighed, I held my head in my hands. I couldn’t believe what I was reading at times. But good lord, this one will stay with me. If you loved Baby Reindeer and Fleabag, this is a must!

Huge thanks to the author, Tanya Sweeney, and the wonderful team at Bantam for my special Harrogate proof! You can grab your own copy of Esther is Now Following You on Amazon or wherever you buy your books. Make sure you’re following Tanya on Instagram for more updates!

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