Christine Riccio

Built a large audience reviewing books on YouTube for a decade before writing one, which meant the novel arrived with an audience already arguing about it.

Again, but Better sends a Californian student on exchange to London, then gives her a second attempt at the same year, and it is transparently drawn from her own study abroad.

Riccio is unusually exposed to her readership, since the same people who watched the reviews reviewed the book, and the reception was mixed in public in a way most debuts are spared.