Wednesday 23 August 2023

People to Follow by Olivia Worley


Ten teen influencers come to a remote island to star in a reality show, but when one of them winds up dead, they realize that this time, the price of being “cancelled” could be their lives.

A reality show on a remote Caribbean island. Ten teen influencers. One dead body.

Welcome to “In Real Life,” the hot new reality show that forces social media’s reigning kings and queens to unplug for three weeks and “go live” without any filters. IRL is supposed to be the opportunity of a lifetime, watched closely by legions of loyal followers. But for these rising stars--including Elody, an Instagram model with an impulsive streak; Kira, a child star turned fitness influencer; Logan, a disgraced TikTok celeb with a secret; and Max, a YouTuber famous for exposés on his fellow creators—it’s about to turn into a nightmare.

When the production crew fails to show up and one of their own meets a violent end, these nine little influencers find themselves stranded with a dead body and no way to reach the outside world. When they start receiving messages from a mysterious Sponsor threatening to expose their darkest secrets, they realize that they’ve been lured into a deadly game…and one of them might be pulling the strings.

With the body count rising and cameras tracking their every move, the creators must figure out who is trying to get them canceled—like, literally—before their #1 follower strikes again.

I love the idea of this, and the cover is fabulous. Look at all those gorgeous colours! (And sinister shadows, but, y'know. Murder.)

Sadly, those are about the nicest things I can say. There are too many characters for me to keep track of; there's a whole web of connections between them that I couldn't really follow, because it all happened before the book started so we just had people's thoughts about it, and of course they were all biased. I couldn't really start figuring out who people were and how they were connected until some of them had been killed off.

It's a really clever idea, and the descriptions of the island were beautiful and very well written, but the story was not for me. Maybe I'm finally too old for YA!



People to Follow publishes on the 31st October, 2023 in both the US and UK, using the same cover. I received a free copy and am giving an honest review.

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