FYRE FESTIVAL meets HUNGER GAMES in this dark psychological thriller about a social media competition that turns deadly.
Welcome to Influencer Island, an experience for ten competitors to travel to paradise and compete for social media glory. Overnight, millions of users send off their submission videos, hoping for the chance to party with the biggest influencers and celebrities in the world.
Or so they thought…
By the time the contest went offline, over a dozen influencers were declared dead or missing. No winner was announced. The only hope for a conclusion lay in an unaired podcast produced by Cal Everett, a young reporter with his own mysterious connection to the murderous contest creator, Wyatt James.
As listeners will soon discover, James designed Influencer Island to be more than a battle of social media wits. If the contestants hope to survive, they will have to answer the question at the very heart of the competition: How far would you be willing to go for fame?
I am a huge fan of The Hunger Games series so I was so interested by the concept of this book. I also remember the absolute wreck that was the Fyre Festival and enjoying the tell all documentaries about it. So I was very excited going into this book and I thoroughly enjoyed it!
The plot was wild! Yet I could totally see it happening which says quite a lot about the culture of social media and influencers. Influencers aren’t necessarily a new thing as even before social media there were people trying to sell their lifestyle through magazines and tv. Social media provided standard humans with the ability to become influencers which resulted in the current ‘phenomenon’ which Google informed me started in 2009.
I loved the format of this book. It was basically a transcript of a podcast which I found to be very easy to consume and resulted in a super fast paced novel that just kept me hooked. I’ve read a few novels written in unusual formats and this is one of the better ones. The plot of this book meant that it just worked so well in this format. I’d totally have listened to this podcast if it happened in real life. However I’d much rather it didn’t because just wow!
I don’t know if I liked any of the characters. I don’t think that it was important to find them likeable. I don’t think I’d have had any interest in any of their public profiles. I liked the way that the characters reacted to their situation, some embracing the idea of harming their competitors and some being actual human beings and not being so keen.
The island location sounded absolutely horrific! I loved finding out more about the island and the more that I found out, the creepier it felt. This book was pretty violent and I’m not usually one for gore. However I felt that the gore wasn’t gratuitous. A lot of scenes hinted towards the violence more than describing it in detail which may be why I enjoyed it so much.
I loved the way that Carrie’s brother and Cal’s father contributed to the story. At first I was a little confused about their relevance and then I was so excited when everything started to come together. I did not guess what was happening but I was happy to just enjoy the ride!
Thank you to NetGalley for providing me with a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. I will be looking out for more books by this author as I just loved the concept.
Kapowski Reads 