Ten competitors get selected to travel to paradise and party with the stars, competing for likes on social media. The competition is unfortunately not as it seems and is a complete bloodbath. This book follows one of the competitors on the island and also a journalist trying to piece together what happened and work out who the elusive artist is that set it all up.

The idea is brilliant. An original concept (at least to me). The formatting of this book is very different (a podcast script) and is based after the competition, put together by a journalist. There are action scenes within, such as one with sharks that I really enjoyed. I think the issue for me is I preferred these moments. The different formatting didn’t quite work for me, as I lost the tense feeling I usually get in thrillers. I wanted to follow from the moment the competitors hit the island, I wanted to see the horror, try to work out who’d survive. I think the formatting also allowed characters less space to be fleshed out, so I often got confused with who was who. I personally preferred the parts that focused on the island.

A lot of people will love how this book is set out, and something a bit different is always incredible, but I just didn’t click with it. If rewritten in the moment, I believe this to have brilliant potential for my personal taste!

Thank you to NetGalley, Kyle Rutkin and Greater Path LLC for this DRC in exchange for an honest review.

Eh, the synopsis was promising but unfortunately it was poorly executed. I saw literally all of the twists coming which just took out the fun of it

This wasn't my favorite, but I am a picky reader. I think other readers will enjoy it, and this is an obvious addition to the collection.

I love a good horror novel, which is what I was expecting from this book. It turned out to be more of a thriller, which I don’t mind if it turns out to be deliciously dark and twisty. However, unfortunately I just found it very hard to get into or to care about anyone involved.

Told via a podcast created by Cal Everett, the case of Influencer Island and what happened there is explored in its aftermath. Cal has a mysterious connection to Influencer Island’s creator Wyatt James and it appears that the ten contestants do too. The influencers invited to the island thought they were travelling to a beautiful paradise and competing for social media fame. However, most of the contestants go missing and the competition is removed from the internet without a winner being announced. It turns out that Wyatt James designed Influencer Island to be much more than a simple contest. It’s a test of how far influencers are willing to go to get famous.

I think I did struggle with the podcast format but I’m not sure why because I have read other books with similar formats (Daisy Jones and the Six) and enjoyed them. It might be because the characters’ voices weren’t particularly distinct from each other. Although their names are clearly stated, I kept forgetting who was talking, which made the story very hard to keep hold of.

It seems to be a simple enough competition but of course as a thriller, I was expecting there to be more than a few curveballs thrown. I assumed that ‘eliminated’ meant killed but by the end, even that was called into question. I’m still not really sure exactly what happened at the end but I don’t think that’s intentional.

I can see the influences of Squid Game, The Hunger Games and Fyre Festival. Unfortunately, there wasn’t a lot of originality in the book and I think a bit of that as well as likeable characters might have held my interest a bit more.

Readers should be warned that although the characters are young people, there is a lot of violence. It’s most definitely an adult novel and I can certainly say that there was plenty of gore. As I don’t really know what happened in the book, I’m not sure how much of the gore was real but the images are definitely very graphic.

Perhaps the most interesting point that Influencer Island raises is the idea that social media portrays a version of people that isn’t necessarily true and that people who live most of their lives on social media can feel trapped by their online selves. Therefore, there can be a mismatch between who they are online and who they feel they really are. That could be the basis of a very interesting, dark psychological thriller but unfortunately, that wasn’t really what was executed here.

Influencer Island is a confusing jumble of chaos that I’m sure will appeal to some readers who thrive on high action but very little characterisation. It’s a quick read and perhaps if it had been longer, Rutkin may have fleshed out his characters a little more and made me care about them. I often don’t mind an ambiguous ending. However, I have a strong feeling here that the ending wasn’t meant to be ambiguous and by the time I got to it, my interest in the story had long gone.

Thank you to NetGalley, Kyle Rutkin and Greater Path LLC for the free e-book in exchange for an honest review.

This was so good. I was obsessed pretty much the entire time. It was dark and completely enthralling. It was twisted and I never saw any of it coming. I really just enjoy Rutkin’s out of the box stories!

I unfortunately wasn’t really a fan! I thought it’d be fun but I think the plot was a little ambitious considering how short the book is.

This was a fun, you know exactly what you are getting from the description, read. With some mystery, everything was on the surface, with no greater depth - which was fine for me. You could say the satire leads to some commentary about today's society, but this was purely a horror 'popcorn' read.

Also, I loved the format of the writing -- told as a podcast transcript.

3.5 starts, rounded to 4

Thanks to Netgalley for a copy in exchange for an unbiased review.

trigger warning
<spoiler> grief, trauma, drug addiction, suicide, gore, torture, being drugged, mention of sexual assault </spoiler>

People are excited: Ten spots are open in a competition that guarantees the winner will be insta-famous - not only famous on instagram, but instantly. There may be a price. And the rest of the world is invited to watch.

Imagine Banksy is doing the Fyre Festival but then it turns out it's a slasher movie.
This book is set after the events unfolded, and a podcast team is trying to make sense of what exactly has been going down. They prepared beforehand for doing this podcast, even set their eyes on two young women who might be chosen to participate and followed their stories. They've been doing some investigating, so they really had to offer something to their audience, and then the whole thing started and they were just swept up in it.
Since they have so much info, after the competition they are in contact with the official investigators, and are in a good position to summarise the events.

Soooo you can see from the rating that this did not work for me. I was expecting the gore and something like the Gretchen McNeil series #murdertrending. I was expecting an emphasis on gore and not on beautiful writing or in-depth character descriptions.
What I did not expect was that this is less than a script. It's simply "characters: Hello I am saying words", not even stage directions or descriptions of how the voice is acting. I was not expecting that the author would throw in <i>all the tropes</i>, from secret organisations to every character having been there for a reason. It felt like a incoherent mess, and I am not choosing this phrasing lightly.

One could argue that that fits the Fyre Festival to a t and that this all was planned.
But you see, another issue I had that I felt the author was really, really proud of this genius idea he had, while I was constantly face-palming and wondering if he took a moment to step back and assess his work with a bit of a distance.
Naaaaah.

If this hadn't been around 145 pages in my arc I would have dnf-ed it, but I thought I can do this in no time, write the review the publisher may still expect, and be done with it.
So, well, if you think after reading this that this book will entertain you, go for it. I am sure this has it's audience, I am just not part of it.

The arc was provided by the publisher.

This book had an intriguing premise and promised a lot, however sadly for me did not deliver. I enjoyed the idea of using a podcast to help tell the narrative and develop the story, but the characters fell flat. They seemed underdeveloped, and it was difficult to distinguish them from one another.

Thank you to the publisher, author and NetGalley for sending me this arc. I will be posting this review on my Goodreads and Storygraph accounts.

Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/57438368-georgie
Storygraph: https://app.thestorygraph.com/profile/gfairs’

Influencer Island is written in the style of a podcast, reminiscent of ‘A Good Girls Guide to Murder’, with a similar writing style to one of my favourite authors, the absolute queen that is Janice Hallett. It is very eerily echoing the infamous Fire Festival, with an added murderous element.

It instantly gripped me from the start. I mean, the very first page just completely had me in a fucking chokehold. I loved the use of audio clips, which I felt just added more of a breath of life into the text, and made it feel somewhat more realistic.

This book had a lot of twists, which at times made it kind of hard to keep up. There where also lots of different storylines (trying to find the missing brother, trying to avenge dads murder etc), that did take the momentum away ever so slightly.

On the whole, it was an enjoyably quick read, with a promising thriller element.

3.5 stars

The premise of this book was intriguing. I requested it because of the title and the cover design as well as the description; it sounded like an amusing thriller. It definitely was amusing as well as a bit dark and satirical. The unique format took me a bit to get used to, but I did enjoy it; as well as being an interesting story, it was one I flew through from start to finish in a few hours, something I haven’t done in quite a while. I feel like some of the writing itself could still be a bit stronger, but all in all, this was a fun read.

When I started reading this book I said to myself "this could go very well or very very badly" and the truth is that it turned out very well.

Influencer Island is a totally twisted story, well thought out, where everything has a connection and that makes it even more tragic and wonderful.

In a society where many people are guided by likes, comments, followers, Influencer Island criticizes this a bit but also takes it in favor to create a story that, taking out some things, could happen in reality (perhaps without so much curiosity and dismemberments, but yes).

Here we find a book that is the transcription of a podcast, adding videos, audios and messages. That seemed super cool to me and gave a super different touch to the story, which added a lot of points.

I felt a bit dizzy about the time in which what I was reading was taking place, it took me a while to understand the dynamics of what the past/present theme was like and that made me lose myself a bit. But once you hook it up, you're done. You immerse yourself in history.

Influencer Island shows that it was thought and rethought, how it could be designed in the best way without leaving anything loose and the truth is that it had an excellent result.

I hope that when it is published it will be very successful and I would love to see a series! It would be a very interesting series to watch, and original!

Thank you Kyle Rutkin for this story and for allowing me to read it before its official publication. I already want to read more!

I will also post the review on magui.world (ig) https://www.instagram.com/magui.world/

I really liked this one. This was a fun take on today's society and how influencers are such a part of our world. It also shows a large group of people's disdain for that "job." I highly recommend this. It was fun!

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for the eARC! All thoughts and opinions are my own.

The premise of this book drew me in at first, but the execution fell flat. I liked the novelty of the podcast structure and was excited for the potential the novel had to be a slasher, but there were several aspects of the story that I couldn't bring myself to enjoy. For instance, most of the characters were not incredibly well-developed, which made them hard to differentiate, let alone connect to. I also thought the motivations of both Cal and the villain were underwhelming, and the flow confused me as I was never sure where the reader was in the timeline of the story itself. I do appreciate the fast pacing (I did read it in one sitting) and the attempt to criticize what people will do for fame, but it ultimately lacked the social commentary that I was expecting and instead inserted far too many pop culture references. In the end, I think I was expecting a polished novel, but it felt like I was reading an early draft.

Content Warnings: gore, death, general violence, cult activity, kidnapping, substance abuse

This was an interesting read and something new on the market, I am interested in seeing this authors future work.

Such an original story that almost reads like a horror fantasy, so I obviously enjoyed it!! Might not be for everyone, but the Fyre + Hunger games for the modern “influencer” driven world is spot on. I think everyone should read this just to encourage Kyle to write more stories like this!!

Thank you author & publisher for the e-arc.

I loved this book! It was so intriguing and kept me on my toes the whole way through. Some parts were 'scary' and had me looking around the corners but I couldn't stop turning the pages. I would 10/10 recommend it.

I found this read to be very fun and interesting!! There were some slow parts, but overall I found it to be great! I would’ve loved a bit more detail, but the characters were very strong!

Hunger Games meets Fyre Festival is actually a pretty good description of much of this book, though I also think there is an element that is unique to this story. It was something that I found in the previous book in the series, She Died Famous, as well. I loved the exploration of the dark side of fame, in a way that takes it to its extreme, but in a way that is disturbingly plausible. I really enjoyed the podcast script and interview type format. I think it was a very effective way to introduce only parts of the story at a time, as each speaker shares their own experiences. The format I can see being something to get used to for some people, but for me it added quite a bit to the story and my enjoyment of it. The characters were interesting and figuring out how people were connected to each other as the story progressed was one of my favorite parts. I realized that I missed reading the prequel to this, Tik Tok Gone, and now I definitely want to go back and read that as well. I really am enjoying this series and this author.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for the review copy in exchange for an honest review.

This was good. This was unique.
But I guess if there was no build-up done by the marketing team, I would have enjoyed it more?
I guess it's the expectations that killed the experience for me.