The Haters (spoilers and ending explained) | Robyn Harding

This review contains spoilers for The Haters by Robyn Harding and goes through how the book ends plus my thoughts. If you are looking for a spoiler-free review of The Haters, I’ve got that covered as well!

A dark psychological suspense novel, The Haters is a play on every writer’s worst nightmare: a cadre of online trolls have their sights setting on slandering your book…and your name. Let’s get into the spoilers!

But first, what is The Haters about?

Camryn Lane is a high school guidance counselor and aspiring writer who has gotten the golden ticket: a publisher. Her debut novel, Burnt Orchid has just come out and she is over the moon. When an email to her newly-created author inbox arrives, accusing her of exploiting stories from her students for her own writing, Camryn is horrified. Who would accuse her of something so horrible?

It turns out this is just the beginning. Her editor waves it away, telling her to focus on the glowing reviews. It isn’t long before the negative reviews come flooding in, though, and they are all on the same theme—she’s exploited her students, she’s a child abuser, and she should be fired. The online harassment doesn’t stay online for long, and soon someone seems to have it out for her personally. They have her phone number, they know her address, and they know all of the people closest to her. Someone is intent on destroying Camryn Lane—but who?

Who are the characters? (a quick rundown)

Camryn Lane is an author and high school guidance counselor. Theo is Camryn’s younger boyfriend. Adrian is her ex-husband and his new wife is Tory. Camryn’s daughter is a high school senior named Liza. Liza’s boyfriend is Wyatt. Other teenagers at the school include Abbie, Fiona, Lily, Misha, Hugo, and Sage. Ingrid Wandry is the name the online troll uses. Camryn’s best friend is Martha and she is married to a man named Felix. Raya, Marnie, Spencer, and Naveed are people from Camryn’s writers’ group.

How does Camryn find Ingrid Wandry?

The name Ingrid Wandry (the name attached to the first email and the 1-star review) is unique enough that Camryn is able to find her social media account. In one photo, she notices that Ingrid is wearing a uniform and there is the name of a veterinary clinic in a sign behind her. Camryn makes the very poor decision to drive there. She spots Ingrid and follows her, and when Ingrid arrives home Camryn confronts her about the online attacks.

It turns out this woman is not named Ingrid Wandry—she’s never even heard of Ingrid Wandry or Camryn Lane. Her name is Megan and she is not happy about Camryn confronting her. At first I thought Megan was softening when Camryn shows her the account using her photos and she realizes that someone who follows her must have created the fake persona. Unfortunately, the more panicked Camryn gets, the angrier Megan gets. She will not help her figure out who is behind the account, and on top of that, her nephew is filming everything. Ugh!

Who does Camryn suspect might be the person behind the harassment?

Camryn suspects basically everyone. After some of the harassment goes to her personal cell phone, follows her to a hotel on a work trip, and goes to her home, Camryn realizes that the person harassing her must be someone she knows. She feels more certain of this when her best friend Martha blows up at her, and Camryn learns that “Camryn” sent an email to Martha’s husband Felix saying Theo (Camryn’s boyfriend) and Martha are having an affair. Camryn didn’t send the email, but it did come from her email account. This means someone got into her email account and knew her well enough to identify her best friend and boyfriend to concoct this scenario. As Camryn becomes more frazzled by the harassment, she becomes more paranoid about who is doing it.

What does Camryn do about the harassment?

I felt for Camryn because she truly tries so many things. On the advice of another author who went through similar harassment, Camryn tries the “don’t feed the trolls” approach. This is going ok, until Megan (the woman Camryn confronted because her photos were used for Ingrid Wandry’s account) releases a TikTok video where she shares a dramatized account of what Camryn did. And she’s not wrong!

Camryn did follow her home from work and confront her, though Megan says it was because of a bad review and leaves out the parts about the harassment. The TikTok ends with footage that Megan’s nephew shot of Camryn begging Megan to listen to her. Yikes! This is when things really blow up for Camryn. The TikTok makes the news. Her publisher finds out and drops her. Her daughter Liza stops speaking to her. Theo and her break up after she accuses him of being behind it.

How does Camryn find out who is responsible?

A situation Camryn has been handling at work reaches a boiling point. A video was passed around that showed a student named Abbie overdosing on molly. The video was distributed by a girl named Fiona, who won’t say what really happened that night or who gave Abbie the drugs. Camryn realizes that a boy she spots with Liza and Wyatt is the nephew of Ingrid / Megan who filmed Camryn. Liza tells her his name is Hugo and she doesn’t know him very well. Hmm…

Meanwhile Camryn’s boss confronts her about several anonymous tips that claim Camryn used their private stories in the creation of Burnt Orchid. Despite her protestations that the accusations are false, Camryn is asked to leave for the remainder of the semester. She’s almost certain Fiona is responsible.

Camryn discovers that Liza’s new friends are Fiona and her posse, and that Liza was at the party the night Abbie overdosed and was filmed. With her life in shambles, Camryn doesn’t know what to do. She asks a hacker that was recommended to her to find out who is responsible for the trolling. When he doesn’t show up for the meeting to reveal what he found, she contacts a friend in law enforcement who tells her that the hacker was found dead in his apartment from a fire.

How does it end?

Camryn is meeting with Abbie’s parents to tell them she recently learned about her daughter’s involvement in Abbie’s harassment, and she notices Abbie watching her through the window with a burn cast covering one arm. She realizes that Abbie must be the one who set the apartment on fire, which means that she is one responsible for the harassment.

After the video was spread around, Abbie was told by Fiona that Liza gave her the drugs, and that Camryn knew about and was covering for her. Fiona convinced Abbie to help her harass Camryn online as payback. When she learned that hacker found out who was responsible, Abbie went to his apartment and tried to burn the computer, but ended up burning the whole place (including the hacker) down. This mirrors the final scene in Burnt Orchid.

Abbie goes to a psychiatric facility after being found guilty of criminally negligent homicide. Her parents move away. Everyone turns on Fiona for what she did to Abbie, Camryn, and others. Fiona was the one who drugged Abbie and took the video with Hugo. Fiona lies and it can’t be proven, but her parents send Fiona away to a behavioral wilderness camp. Camryn and Theo stay broken up, and many of her friendships are irreparably damaged. She gets a job at a new school as a counselor, and she begins to write again, planning to find a new publisher and put her book out under a pseudonym and do no social media promotion. Camryn’s second book is based on true stories from her life. It’s called The Haters.

What did I think about the ending?

This is a roller coaster ride! It did seem at a certain point that the Abbie storyline was going to be relevant because it starts at the beginning. But the reveal was shocking, for me. I didn’t suspect Abbie and I only kind of suspected Fiona. Abbie setting the hacker’s apartment on fire was wild, and it’s a bit heartbreaking after she was relentlessly bullied and suffered a mental break. Meanwhile there were so many people in Camryn’s life who weren’t good friends to her.

At the same time, we can all acknowledge that Camryn really spiraled. What Harding did well was to help the reader see that many of us may have made the same choices that Camryn did. As an outsider, it was like a wrecking ball that crashed into one thing after another. Camryn tracks down Ingrid/Megan and hopes to talk sense into her. Megan doesn’t take it well at all. Camryn gets involved with the trolls on twitter, then is forced to release an apology from her publisher and turn off her socials. The TikTok goes viral and makes the news. Everyone in her life turns on her. She loses her job, her daughter, her relationship, and her publisher.

It seemed that Camryn needed to hit rock bottom to figure out a way out of this mess. When things were falling apart, but not gone, Camryn was too swayed by what others thought—what statement she should release, how to respond to trolls, whether to state her side, etc. I liked the ending, but I admit I was initially disappointed. I was hoping it would turn out to be someone shocking like Martha (her best friend) or maybe Theo. I actually considered whether Camryn was using her students’ stories for her book, and someone knew the truth.

After watching it play out, I came around and loved the way it ended. I’ll explain why. The accusations against Camryn were that she exploited her students’ personal stories to write her book. When it came to Burnt Orchid, that allegation was false, but it didn’t stop the mob from coming after her. But what did we learn in the final sentence of the book? Camryn wrote a second book and called it The Haters. It was this book. In the end, did Camryn use her students’ stories in some part as inspiration for her book? It seems so.

My one disappointment was that there wasn’t a stronger tie between Burnt Orchid and the story. Abbie was inspired by the book to set the hacker’s apartment on fire, but that wasn’t the strongest connection. I kept thinking it would turn out that Orchid’s character was based on Camryn herself. We never learned Camryn’s full backstory, after all. She vaguely mentions her family living somewhere else, but it was completely possible that her story inspired Orchid’s. Could Camryn have been abused, forced on the street, and started low-level drug trafficking? Certainly possible. In the book, Orchid meets a trust fund man when she gets sponsored to go to university, and I was convinced that was Adrian. A stronger connection between Burnt Orchid and Camryn would have added a delicious layer to the story, but it didn’t necessarily detract from the book to not have that tie in.

Overall this delivers Robyn Harding’s signature gripping storyline, compelling narration, and twists and turns. The ending is unexpected, and may not be what every reader hoped for. I liked it, but it took me some reflection to see the brilliance of it.