Introduction

Dell Danvers is at the end of her rope. She’s unemployed and living in a cramped studio apartment with debilitating stomach pain and no way to pay for her comatose sister’s care. Impulsively, she creates an internet persona and begins to livestream every moment of her life. Her fame skyrockets when she discovers a knack for eating spicy peppers on camera. As her online community grows, so does her bank account, and all the solutions to her problems seem to be within reach. But when an internet troll starts digging into her real life, Dell is forced to reckon with her actions and confront the gap between her online presence and who she really is.

Topics & Questions for Discussion

1. Dell decides to livestream herself for a week straight. Do you use social media? How do you feel about sharing your life online?

2. How is Dell's living situation a metaphor for her mental state? Have you lived in a truly horrendous apartment?

3. Discuss Lee and Dell’s relationship. Does Lee enable Dell? Does Dell take advantage of Lee?

4. Along her livestream journey, Dell stumbles into many online communities, like the hot sauce community and the plant propagation community. Are you a member of any niche communities? How do these forums allow you to learn more about a topic?

5. Dell’s first challenge is to eat five jalapeño peppers. Eating spicy food becomes her brand as a streamer, and soon she’s entering a world record contest! Do you eat spicy food? Would you ever try a habanero? What about a Carolina Reaper?

6. At what point did you realize Dell might not be telling the truth about her sister?

7. Humor and grief work in tandem throughout the novel. To what effect? Choose a scene where this occurs and discuss.

8. Revisit Dell’s trip to the hospital on Friday. Did her actions cross a line for you, or do you think her hospital visit was part of her healing process? What did you think of her interaction with Dr. Dole?

9. Do you think Casper is the villain in the story or is he doing what he thinks is morally correct?

10. Discuss how you felt when you learned what happened to Daisy. Do you think Dell was to blame?

11. Dell’s recurring stomach issues are an ongoing source of discomfort for her. They culminate in a perforated ulcer, emergency surgery, and a reunion with her mother. Does this feel like the natural, inevitable conclusion to Dell’s story?

12. We get glimpses of Dell’s relationship with her mother through flashbacks, clipped text messages, emotional voicemails, and a coffee meetup. What did you think about the dynamic between Dell and her mom?

13. Early in the novel Dell believes she has a pepper seed stuck in her ear. As the book progresses, the seed grows into a marigold and Dell is finally able to remove it from her ear. What do you think this symbolizes?

14. Discuss the title of the novel, Just Watch Me. Is it a plea or a threat? Did the meaning evolve as you read the book?

Enhance Your Book Club:

1. Peppers are a big part of Just Watch Me. Consider including hot peppers, hot sauce, or salsa at your book club to spice up your discussions!

2. Choose a livestream on a topic you enjoy and join the conversation in the comments section. Share your experience with the group!

3. Discuss other books with unreliable narrators and how they affect the structure of the story.

A Conversation with Lior Torenberg:

How did you come up with the idea for Just Watch Me?

Just Watch Me started as a pandemic novel. I was more online than usual and fascinated by the different corners of the internet that I came across. Specifically, Twitch and its various livestreaming communities. What was the deal with all these livestreams of people just going about their day, folding their laundry, going to the gym? And why were so many people watching?

Around the same time, people started talking about the loneliness epidemic. And seen through the lens of loneliness, I had so much more empathy for both sides of the livestreaming experience: both the person behind the camera, and the person behind their keyboard.

I’m not an online person by nature. I wanted to understand who these people were and what they got out of this unique form of communion.

When we’re performing, when we’re putting on a mask, are we sometimes able to tell a truer version of the truth? And when people choose to watch us, witness us, is there an intimacy formed there?

Adoration on one side of the coin. Obsession on the other.

When Dell decides to livestream her life for a week, she consents to online scrutiny from strangers. What is your relationship with social media? How do you think it impacts our day-to-day lives?

Facebook and Instagram became a thing when I was in high school. They were much simpler tools then. The internet felt like a message board for you and your friends. The scope was small.

Since then, the scope has just gotten larger and larger. I’m more of a content consumer than a creator nowadays, and I’m okay with that.

It’s hard to talk about how social media has impacted our day-to-day lives because the influence is so inextricable. The first thing we do in the morning and the last thing we do at night is look at our phones. I think the jury’s still out on what the long-term effects of never-ending content might do to us and our ability to connect and concentrate.

But I’m cautiously optimistic, because I have to be. I think there is real enrichment, knowledge, and joy available online if we tend to our algorithms well, like our own little plants that need concerted care and curation.

We might as well try to mold our particular bubble so that it makes our lives bigger, not smaller.

Tell us about your involvement in the hot-pepper-eating community! Why do you find it so fascinating? What sort of people have you met along your own journey in the community?

I’ve been obsessed with spicy food for as long as I can remember. I even entered a jalapeño-eating competition at a school fair when I was in fifth grade! But my love of the hot sauce and hot pepper community really solidified in 2018 when I started attending the annual NYC Hot Sauce Expo, where the world record competition is held.

The hot sauce community is made up of every type of person. From families with strollers to angsty teens to former addicts chasing another high, all the way to pepper farmers and the gourmet/artisanal food crowd. The diversity is intense and instantly felt.

Hot sauce, like wine and coffee, breeds obsession. There is so much space for craft and care, and that space is filled and then some. My hot sauce shelf is nearly as full as my bookshelf at this point.

Do you have a favorite minor character in Just Watch Me? If so, why?

Nik is a good dude. Dell is hard—impossible—to deal with. We know that, and we also know how many chances Nik has probably given her. I don’t hold it against him for firing her. And yeah, it’s a bit rude that he withheld her last paycheck, but she left the store unattended! In Grand Central Terminal! Wild.

I also have a document where I separated out all of Dell’s viewers so I could keep their personalities consistent, and I’m really fond of chickenleggy. She’s just so excited all the time—OMG! HI! YAY!

The structure of the novel creates so much dramatic tension between Dell and the reader. For much of the novel, we are left wondering what happened to Dell’s sister, Daisy. Did you always know what happened to Daisy?

I didn’t always know what happened to Daisy. But I had a very strong suspicion that Dell was involved.

I’m fascinated with the idea of complicity—both online and in our real lives, we are complicit in so much. We can’t avoid it. Where we shop, what we eat, how we travel, the child labor that goes into making our smartphones. Complicity is part of modern existence. And it’s awful. So we try not to think about it.

Like Dell, we’re in denial all the time.

But complicity, like all things, is a spectrum. I knew Dell would fall high on that spectrum, but I also knew there still needed to be a gray area for redemption. So I had Dell confess what happened to me in her own way. I started writing in a format that I thought would give her a gentle, confessional way out of her denial: “I would never . . . but if I did . . .”

Dell’s relationship with Daisy is a driving force of the novel. What drew you to write about sisterhood?

My little sister is one of my best friends, if not my best friend. And anxiety always puts the worst thoughts in your head, especially about the people you love. A very common anxiety spiral goes along the lines of: What if I ruin everything? What if I do something so bad I can never come back from it? What if I hurt everyone, and everything is all my fault?

This very specific type of dread is illogical, compulsive. But I wanted to write toward it. Press on the wound. Let the worst thing in the world happen and see how my protagonist claws her way back—if that’s what we can call Dell’s journey through her excruciating seven-day stream and beyond.

What if you messed everything up and you couldn’t fix it? Would you still try? Even if it made no sense?

Is there really any other option?