Review: "People to Follow" by Olivia Worley

People to Follow by Olivia Worley
Published October 2023 via Wednesday Books
★★★

It's a picture-perfect retreat built for influencers—three weeks away from the world, without phones or social media or follows or likes. But there's a catch: the ten influencers will be filmed 24/7 for a reality show.

And then there's another catch: Everyone has a secret to hide, and somebody is determined to expose all their secrets to the world...and when bodies start piling up, it's clear that the remaining influencers are at risk of far more than being cancelled.

I'm starting to think that I'll have to set a Goodreads shelf for #influencerlife or something—it is a such a specific/weird subgenre, but for the time being at least I'm completely here for it. (Is it weird that I'm even more here for it that authors keep writing #influencerlife books in which influencers get murdered? I don't want that in real life—if it needs to be said—but I'm never going to say no to more fiction with camp and murder and over-the-top-ness.) People to Follow has some heavy Agatha Christie vibes (and I'm here for that too), but set at a modern, sub-drenched retreat and, you know, with cameras everywhere. Plenty of red herrings to keep a reader busy.

There are ten influencers on the island, a few of whom serve as narrators throughout the book. I have some mixed feelings about that (all you have to do is scan the chapter headings to see who survives until at least late in the book, and I did have to keep checking the chapter headings to see whose POV I was in), but I also enjoy the sense of not being able to fully trust any of the narrators in addition to wondering, you know, whodunnit. Very enjoyable quick read (I blasted through this on a very long bus ride), and very much a read for fans of Live Your Best Lie, Killer Content, et cetera.

Thanks to the author and publisher for providing a review copy through NetGalley.