Earlier this week, Rolling Stone writer Olivia Messer published the first ever review of Caroline Calloway’s soon-to-be-published memoir, Scammer. For those of you who are as chronically online as I am, this is a massively exciting day. The fact that the renowned It-girl actually published a book is a thrill in and of itself.

Calloway, who told Messer she “takes pills for anxiety every single day” (same girl), started accepting preorders for her memoir over three years ago. It was the anxiety, she said, that caused her to fail to deliver it sooner, but many believed this “book” was yet another cash grab. In fact, many of the people who initially preordered a copy have already requested their money back. It sounds like they’re going to regret it, because according to Messer the book is actually good.

Who is Caroline Calloway?

For those of you who may be unaware, Calloway rose to infamy in 2013 when she failed to deliver a book for which she was given a $100,000 advance. The Instagram-famous young adult, well known for her lengthy, poetic captions, soon fell under even more fire after accusations arose that she paid for her followers and was in fact scamming her way through life. She went on tour and failed to deliver, was sued by her landlord for the messy state she left her apartment in upon moving out, and forged her way into Cambridge University. The most memorable (and veritable) knock against her authenticity, however, came from her best friend Natalie Beach.

Beach claimed to have been Calloway’s ghostwriter in an article for The Cut. In fact, not only did she write the Instagram captions, but she was halfway through Calloway’s initial “memoir” when she found out that her friend would not publish a word she wrote. According to Messer, large portions of Calloway’s memoir focus on Beach’s betrayal. She is still caught up on their friendship breakup in a way that seems “more like an ex-lover than a one-time pal”.

I caught flack on a Caroline Calloway Reddit thread for my review of Natalie Beach’s own memoir, Adult Drama, in which I stated that the style of writing was not what I expected from Calloway’s one-time ghostwriter. At the time I felt badly for what Redditors claimed was a failure to judge Beach on her own merits—a lesson for not Googling your own name—but given how much of Calloway’s own memoir is supposedly dedicated to Beach, can I really be blamed? It stands to reason that the most captivating portion of each of their lives was the one they existed in together.

While it does not sound like Calloway and Beach were romantically involved—Beach’s own memoir emphasized her straightness despite her “gender non-conforming attire”—the feelings in that dynamic were strong. In fact, it might make more sense if Caroline Calloway had been in love with Beach. Haven’t we all had the experience of being in love with our straight best friend? 

Bisexuality and… Taylor Swift?

Scammer does not just talk about Natalie Beach, of course. It also dives into Calloway’s oft questioned bisexuality (she tweeted this just one month after preorders began for her book) and her experiences as a woman in the world. It sounds as if Calloway is attempting to position herself as somewhat of a feminist pariah, deemed “soulless” because she is a woman who craves popularity. If this sounds like the same stance as one of the world’s most famous pop singers, that’s because it is.

Calloway’s style of writing, says Messer, can be compared to that of Taylor Swift, and it’s not just because of her distinct brand of white feminism. It’s also because the writing is “sapphic and layered and annoyingly clever, even if you try not to bob along to the tune”. The latter two claims, that Swift’s writing is “layered” and “annoyingly clever” are of course true. This is the woman who wrote the evermore album. But sapphic? A word that quite literally means “relating to sexual attraction or activity between women”? I’ve said before that I believe Taylor Swift is gay, and Rolling Stone has published an article about the #Gaylor movement in the past, but the article was more of an exploration into what other people think. This is a statement of fact.

To be Swiftian is to be Sapphic.

I said at the top of this article that if you’re a chronically online millennial or older Gen-Z, you’re counting down the days until the Scammer release. If you’re a queer millennial or older Gen-Z, the Rolling Stone article alone was your Super Bowl.

Will you be reading Scammer by Caroline Calloway?