The word influencer, meaning "a person with the ability to influence potential buyers of a product or service by promoting or recommending the items on social media," is new to my vocabulary. Little did I know that teens can make a lot of money in this endeavor, but it seems to take a toll on them. The perfect imagine they project on their Instagram feed is hard to live up to, and the notoriety makes them vulnerable to jealous or obsessed fans trying to expose their secrets and jeopardize their sponsorships. Four new young adult novels focus on teen influencers, and interestingly they are all mystery thrillers. Never Coming Home by Kate Williams is a retelling of Agatha Christie's And Then There Were None, with ten young influencers being lured to Unknown Island where they are killed off one by one. Influence by Sara Shepard (Pretty Little Liars) and Lilia Buckingham is a behind-the-scenes look at the seemingly glamourous world of teen influencers, which evolves into a murder mystery. Lord of the Fly Fest by Goldy Moldavsky (The Mary Shelley Club) is a reimagining of Lord of the Flies if it took place at the Fyre Festival. Live Your Best Lie by Jessica Weaver finds a popular teen influencer, who is publishing a tell-all memoir, dead with her best friends being the most logical murder suspects.
In Never Coming Home ten young influencers are invited to Unknown Island for a luxurious all-expense-paid vacation. They eagerly accept, hoping to increase their following and monetize their fame. However, when they arrive, all they find is a rundown hotel with few amenities, no staff and no Wi-Fi. They soon discover they were invited for reasons other than their influencer fame. Each one has caused a person's death with no consequences and someone wants revenge. As they begin dying off one by one, they struggle to decide who to trust and how to stay alive. How each influencer rose to fame and the secret they are hiding creates interest and suspense. With unexpected twists this page-turner will thrill readers until the final reveal.
Influence sheds light on the dark side of the highly competitive teen influencer world, when Scarlett Leigh, a highly successful, but vicious, social media maven is murdered. There are a variety of suspects including Delilah or Lila D, who has just moved to LA, becoming famous after a video of her rescuing a puppy from a burning building goes viral. Lila has unwittingly struck up a romance with Scarlett's boyfriend, You Tube Star Jack Dono. When mega media star Jasmine Walters-Diaz invites Lila to an influencer event she is thrilled. There she meets Fiona Jacobs, an actress with a dark secret that is aggravating her OCD. Fiona suspects that Scarlett, who is competing with her for an acting job, knows the secret and is threatening to expose her. Jasmine has a secret as well. She shared a kiss with a masked female influencer and begins worrying about how her attraction to girls will affect her fanbase. Mystery writer Sara Shephard has teamed up with real-life actress and teen influencer Lilia Buckingham to explore the pressures put on young social media stars to be what their fans expect and how far they will go to get ahead.
Lord of the Fly Fest is a satirical thriller that introduces True Crime Podcaster Rafi Francisco, who is hoping to out musician River Stone as a murderer on her podcast Musical Mysteries. She follows him to the Fly Festival, which, like the real-life Fyre festival, promises to be a luxurious festival filled with music and opportunities to increase one's social media following. The attendees arrive on the Caribbean Island and realize the advertising has been all smoke and mirrors. There's is no staff to greet them and accommodations are FEMA tents left over from the last disaster. Most of the guests are wealthy social media influencers and Rafi feels out of place. But River Stone shows up and she is determined to get an interview with him and prove he murdered his girlfriend Tracy who disappeared. When another girl goes missing after hiking with River, Rafi is sure she is right. Meanwhile, rumors of the appearance of River's latest girlfriend Hella Badid keep festival goers from fleeing. The absurdities in the social media world are showcased by the cast of influencers who are with Rafi on the island. Waiting for Hella to appear, they are monetizing everything from Wi-Fi access, which is fairly non-existent to poop beauty masks, for those stuck without their usual makeup and beauty supplies. While the central mystery is suspenseful, it is really the silly influencers and their Lord of the Flies inspired antics that make the book an entertaining read.
Although it doesn't come out until January, I wanted to include Live Your Best Lie, which much like Influence focuses on the murder of social media influencer. Summer Cartwright goes missing during her Halloween party and her closest friends fear for her life. Grace, her best friend, Adam, her gamer ex-boyfriend, Laney, her roommate from a recent influencer camp and Cora, her worshipful assistant, all decide to investigate. Summer is planning a tell-all memoir which will reveal their secrets. Told from multiple points of view, the story reveals all are suspects, when Summer's body is found. She had been killed by an overdose of nicotine, which they had been talking about before her murder. Summer had already scheduled social media posts with excerpts from the book as teasers before the book's publication, which give hints as to why each would want to kill her. Once again the pressures that bring out the worst in teen influencers are explored in the form of a murder mystery.
