Influencer Noir

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I must admit a fondness for following influencers. They’re just like us, but curated! Personally, I follow the plus size and modesty influencers (along with all the booktokers and bookstagrammers), while most of these novels are focused on jet-setting beauties and polished mums, but anyone who’s even dipped their toe in social media understands—branding and personhood become dangerously intertwined when the product you’re selling is your own life. Beyond all the messiness that happens IRL, there’s extra potential for danger in being Extremely Online. But is that danger more about exposing yourself to stalkers? Destroying your own privacy and that of your family? Or is it a more insidious creep from self-reliant normality to narcissistic emptiness, a slow seeping away of selfhood, that so disturbs us about those who bare all for their fans? The following novels don’t shy away from asking the hard questions when it comes to exploitation, but provide complexity and context for those who’ve chosen to live their lives in front of the camera.

Megan Goldin, Dark Corners
(St Martin’s Press)

A serial killer soon to be released from prison receives a visit from an influencer. Shortly after, she disappears. Could he be involved? What could she have found out about his past crimes? Goldin’s true crime podcaster heroine Rachel Krall returns to find answers.

Disha Bose, Dirty Laundry
(Ballantine)

Ciara Dunphy is the queen bee of her small Irish village, whose ambivalence towards her own family doesn’t make it into her carefully curated mommy influencer persona. Her best friend, Mishti, misses her home in India and distrusts her psychologist husband and his reluctance to visit their relatives. Her sworn enemy, Lauren, has been picked on for far too long by the mean girls of the village, and she’s had about enough of Ciara’s fakery. And then, Ciara ends up dead….I tore through this delicious and insightful thriller, where plenty of plausible suspects and reveals keep the reader guessing.

Ellery Lloyd, People Like Her
(Harper Paperbacks)

There’s something really astonishing (and kind of charming?) about the fact that a couple with a child wrote a novel this disturbing. In People Like Her, an Instamom with an enormous following is in danger from one particular fan. What has she done to deserve such fury? And what lengths with her parasocial nemesis go to for vengeance? Of particular note is the narrator’s version of the “Cool Girl” Speech as applied to mothers: they must be neat, but not too neat, happy, but harried, kind, but not to point of spoiling, consistent, but never to the point of inflicting punishment, and constantly providing updates, while letting children live their own lives.

Melissa de la Cruz, Going Dark
(Union Square)

This fast-paced thriller has plenty of shocking reveals and shady characters, as we follow the story of a missing influencer who seems to embody the Missing White Woman scenario (at least, until we begin to uncover her many secrets). There’s also another girl, the one who went missing years before, and who shared more in common with the influencer than one might think.

Amy Goldsmith, Those We Drown
(Delacorte)

Another Sea-mester book! But quite complementary to the other book set at sea, as this one is horror. Those We Drown features a group of wealthy kids and one scholarship student on a weeks-long cruise where they must mingle with influencers, the elderly, and soon enough, sea monsters. Those We Drown gets bonus points for cheekiness—some of the villains are literally named the Sirens, and one of those keeps singing sea shanties. Delightfully campy and creepy!

Bradeigh Godfrey, The Followers
(Blackstone, August 29)

Bradeigh Godfrey has crafted an impeccable cat-and-mouse thriller as the sister of a murder victim stalks the main suspect from the case via his influencer wife. Ten years earlier, he vanished with her niece, and she’s determined to reconnect—and finally solve the crime.

Lisa Springer, There’s No Way I’d Die First
(Delacorte Press, September 5)

Influencers! Halloween games! And a KILLER CLOWN!!!! There’s no way the narrator won’t make it to the end of this book, with all her Final Girl brilliance, which means there’s no way that you, the reader, will not also make it to the end of the very fun, very campy slasher novel. Springer’s heroine is trying to get attention for her horror film club and invites her prep school’s most influential students to an exclusive Halloween party at her parent’s mansion. Unfortunately, the party entertainment she’s hired has their own agenda, and it’ll take all her knowledge of horror tropes and household chemistry to outwit the clown’s righteous fury and grotesque gags.

Olivia Worley, People to Follow
(Wednesday Books, October 31)

And Then There Were None meets Device Free Weekend as a group of young influencers gathers on an island for an exclusive tech detox. They’re expecting to be filmed as part of a reality show as soon as their cell phones go dark. Instead, they’re being exposed as frauds to their followers, then dropping dead, one by one.

Linda Cheng, Gorgeous Gruesome Faces
(Roaring Brook Press, November 7)

In this high-concept horror, Cheng’s narrator Sunny is a disgraced former member of a manufactured girl group that was meant for K-pop stardom—at least, until one of the members killed herself, and the other cuts off all contact with Sunny. When Sunny finds a chance to reconnect with her bandmate, and finally understand what went wrong, she leaps in without hesitation: there’s a new contest to become the next big pop idol, and she’ll stay in the program until she discovers the truth, no matter how dangerous.

Charlotte Vassell, The Other Half
(Anchor Books, November 21)

Is the influencer at the heart of Charlotte Vassell’s new murder-mystery-of-manners truly passionate about brand partnerships and makeup? Or is it all an ironic scheme concocted to impress the art world? It’s up to the detectives to find out when she’s found murdered just after her wealthy paramour’s blow-out birthday party.

Delphine de Vigan, Kids Run the Show
(Europa, November 28)

Damn, this book got dark. Like, you think it can’t get any darker, then it does. In Kids Run the Show, the younger child of a prominent mommy vlogger is kidnapped, and as the search continues, the reader begins to wonder if the child might be better off wherever they are than at home being constantly filmed. De Vigan has written a blistering critique of influencer culture, the erasure of privacy, and the exploitation of children. The prophetic ending takes us decades into the future to contemplate the psychological wounds of  a generation raised to perform on the internet, for a deeply unsettling experience.

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