THE INFLUENCERS

SYNOPSIS

When budding true crime blogger Maggie Shaw is invited to the Influencer of the Year awards, it feels like everything is finally falling into place. The party is held on a glamorous yacht and presents the perfect opportunity for Maggie to network – the first step towards achieving her dream of turning her hobby into a full-time job. But by the end of the night, there’s one question on everybody’s lips: who killed Stella Knight?

Stella was beautiful and famous. Her life appeared to be perfect. But behind the façade, Stella had made a number of enemies – and all of them were on board.

Title: The influencers

Author: S.V. Leonard

Publisher: Canelo

Publication date: March 10, 2022

REVIEW

RATING: ⭐⭐⭐⭐

The life of an influencer is desirable and glitzy on the outside, a life to die for, and some people are willing to do anything to get it, even kill for it. But this glamorous life hides lots of dirty laundry under the surface, and The influencers explores this duality in a really fun and entertaining story I could not stop reading.

Maggie Shaw is a true crime blogger desperate to make herself a name in the influencer’s world. When she’s invited to the “Influencer of the Year” Awards aboard a luxury yacht, she thinks her luck is about to change, but when Stella Knight, one of the biggest name on social media is murderer during the ceremony, Maggie founds herself in the middle of the murder investigation, teaming up with Reiss, a beauty blogger, to uncover who killed Stella.

If S.V. Leonard’s debut novel, The Islanders, drew inspiration from And Then There Were None, The Influencers could have some parallels with Death On The Nile because of its setting. The yacht and the three hour long trip back to land with a killer aboard, made for some tense and claustrophobic scenes and a great starting point for our duo of amateur sleuths. Maggie and Reiss’s interactions were so much fun to read. Their two different worlds colliding offered some really interesting moments laced with some humour.

The world of the influencers was really well portrayed, raising several important points about the role of these people and the responsability and maturity they should have when speaking about certain topics or promoting certain products, cause not everything goes, especially when it comes to young kids. Most of the characters were awful people and I have no proof (but also, no doubt) that real life influencers are not much better! 😅

The mystery unfolded as a classic mystery with Maggie trying to eliminate suspects from the pool. Although I saw coming the final twist, it was really well done, and even though I guessed the who, the why still held many surprises that made the resolution really enjoyable. 

The Influencers was a really entertaining and easy read where trying to fit together all the pieces of the puzzle was really fun. You should read it (not that I wanna influence you. Well, maybe I do 😉).

Thanks to NetGalley and Canelo for providing an eARC in exchange for an honest review.