![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Entry tags:
Island Of Influencers by Monique Turner
The Blurb On The Back:
Harper wants to be an influencer. Badly. She’ll do anything to be like her famous cousin, Belle.
When Belle is the latest ‘victim’ in a string of influencer kidnappings, and is put on an island for a new reality show, Harper wants in too.
It’s her chance to join the greatest talents and finally make a name for herself.
But with demeaning tasks and the constant pressure of a live audience judging their every move, it’s not long before cracks begin to appear in the influencers’ shiny veneers …
17-year-old Harper Herald lives in a small two-up-two-down house in Oldham with her dad (who works as a postman) and her mum. Unlike Harper’s cousin, Belle Betchel, whose dad made a fortune from insurance, Harper’s family have to watch the pennies. Belle has used her rich kid lifestyle to become a successful influencer on Tubeify under the handle Belle Devereaux and Harper desperately wants to be like her. For the last year she’s been working as Belle’s personal assistant, getting her coffee, helping her to organise her videos and seeing what it takes to generate the content that keeps Belle’s millions of fans entertained.
Even though Harper has a great grasp of Tubeify’s algorithms and knows what type of content will do best for Belle’s views, Harper can’t work out what type of content she wants to make and her own Tubeify channel has never taken off. She wants Belle to do some content with her to give her a lift but Belle has been resistant and keeps telling her that being an influencer is not as great as Harper thinks it is.
When Tubeify’s biggest influencers start to disappear - their pages replaced with a countdown clock - Harper is frustrated that Belle won’t take it seriously but that frustration turns to fear when Belle herself disappears. With the police believing that it’s all a hoax to generate views, Harper decides to investigate it herself, helped by her on-line friend Cady. When she learns that the influencers’ disappearances are linked to an on-line contest called Island of Influencers, which is being hosted by rival social media site iGENect, Harper gets offered the chance to join them and finally become an influencer in her own right.
But as the contest gets underway and aware that people are scrutinising her every move, Harper begins to wonder if being internet famous is all that she thinks it is …
Monique Turner’s debut YA thriller is a clunky polemic about influencing culture and how celebrity is a trap. It’s an interesting high concept - especially given how pervasive influencing is - but the execution left me cold, particularly the inconsistencies in Harper’s character and her relationship with Belle - while the influencer contest is flat, not helped by the cardboard characterisation of the influencers, which makes them interchangeable.
I picked this up because I am genuinely interested in influencer culture and social media, having read several non-fiction books on the subject and watched a number of documentaries so I was keen to see how Turner used it in her novel.
The first thing to say is that this novel is really a polemic. It’s high concept and the central message is that being famous is a trap and being an influencer is not all glamour. I can’t argue with the message, but my big issue with the book is that there is absolutely no subtly here. Turner is not interested in exploring the shades of grey within the issues, which is why the influencer characters are all two-dimensional at best, and little more than names on the page at works.
The story is narrated through Harper’s point of view and I did not believe in her as a teenage girl. Turner seems to be going for irony with Harper wanting to be an influencer when she doesn’t have any friends in real life and her only on-line friend is Cady, who she has never met in person and I think this would have been fine had someone at some point called her out on it. Unfortunately that doesn’t happen, which is a shame because the only pushback Harper gets to her goal is from Belle and Turner hasn’t done enough to establish their relationship beyond Harper’s envy and Belle’s apparent obliviousness towards her own privilege. There is no sense of authenticity to these scenes, which also means that when Harper is tempted to throw Belle under a bus during the Island of Influencers games, there’s no emotional impact to it.
Similarly, there is little sense of any relationship between Harper and Cady, who is reduced to essentially being a cheerleader or the second half of the book. My other issue with Harper is that she makes stupid decisions for reasons solely designed to drive the plot forward, e.g. she makes a deal with a rival in the final quarter even though she doesn’t like them and has said that she doesn’t trust them. I don’t have an issue with unreliability in itself but there needs to be some kind of internal logic driving it and Turner just doesn’t convey that at all.
The Island of Influencers game format itself is a bit silly. Turner deliberately references THE HUNGER GAMES several times and there are obvious comparisons, e.g. each influencer has the chance to impress corporate sponsors who can in turn give them equipment to be used in the game. The difference is that instead of being killed, the influencers are subjected to humiliating tasks instead (think I’M A CELEBRITY). This brings me to my next problem with the book, which is when you learn what is driving the whole contest, the format makes absolutely zero sense. In fact, the last thing you would expect the antagonist to want is to subject the influences to anything that could adversely impact their respective brands because it goes to the look-forward value of their propositions. I could also come up with several arguments as to why the antagonist’s plan can be pushed back on - not least to do with the fact that the majority (but not all) of the influences are under 18, which means that under both Scots and English law, the contracts they signed are not enforceable.
Tied in with this is that Turner portrays a pretty reductive view of what influencing is. Each influencer is reduced to flogging products direct on camera and while I do not disagree that this and sponsorship is part of the influencer lifestyle, increasingly it relies on a sense of authenticity. None of the influencers in the book have any sense of authenticity and nor do they discuss it - instead they all focus on how they are deliberately portraying something that they are not and that again just kept taking me out of the story.
All in all, I wish that I had enjoyed this more than I did because I think there’s a lot of scope for a good YA thriller about influencer culture, but this book just did not have the nuance or internal logical consistency to work for me.
The Verdict:
Monique Turner’s debut YA thriller is a clunky polemic about influencing culture and how celebrity is a trap. It’s an interesting high concept - especially given how pervasive influencing is - but the execution left me cold, particularly the inconsistencies in Harper’s character and her relationship with Belle - while the influencer contest is flat, not helped by the cardboard characterisation of the influencers, which makes them interchangeable.
ISLAND OF INFLUENCERS was released in the United Kingdom on 13 February 2025. Thanks to the Amazon Vine Programme for the review copy of this book.
Harper wants to be an influencer. Badly. She’ll do anything to be like her famous cousin, Belle.
When Belle is the latest ‘victim’ in a string of influencer kidnappings, and is put on an island for a new reality show, Harper wants in too.
It’s her chance to join the greatest talents and finally make a name for herself.
But with demeaning tasks and the constant pressure of a live audience judging their every move, it’s not long before cracks begin to appear in the influencers’ shiny veneers …
17-year-old Harper Herald lives in a small two-up-two-down house in Oldham with her dad (who works as a postman) and her mum. Unlike Harper’s cousin, Belle Betchel, whose dad made a fortune from insurance, Harper’s family have to watch the pennies. Belle has used her rich kid lifestyle to become a successful influencer on Tubeify under the handle Belle Devereaux and Harper desperately wants to be like her. For the last year she’s been working as Belle’s personal assistant, getting her coffee, helping her to organise her videos and seeing what it takes to generate the content that keeps Belle’s millions of fans entertained.
Even though Harper has a great grasp of Tubeify’s algorithms and knows what type of content will do best for Belle’s views, Harper can’t work out what type of content she wants to make and her own Tubeify channel has never taken off. She wants Belle to do some content with her to give her a lift but Belle has been resistant and keeps telling her that being an influencer is not as great as Harper thinks it is.
When Tubeify’s biggest influencers start to disappear - their pages replaced with a countdown clock - Harper is frustrated that Belle won’t take it seriously but that frustration turns to fear when Belle herself disappears. With the police believing that it’s all a hoax to generate views, Harper decides to investigate it herself, helped by her on-line friend Cady. When she learns that the influencers’ disappearances are linked to an on-line contest called Island of Influencers, which is being hosted by rival social media site iGENect, Harper gets offered the chance to join them and finally become an influencer in her own right.
But as the contest gets underway and aware that people are scrutinising her every move, Harper begins to wonder if being internet famous is all that she thinks it is …
Monique Turner’s debut YA thriller is a clunky polemic about influencing culture and how celebrity is a trap. It’s an interesting high concept - especially given how pervasive influencing is - but the execution left me cold, particularly the inconsistencies in Harper’s character and her relationship with Belle - while the influencer contest is flat, not helped by the cardboard characterisation of the influencers, which makes them interchangeable.
I picked this up because I am genuinely interested in influencer culture and social media, having read several non-fiction books on the subject and watched a number of documentaries so I was keen to see how Turner used it in her novel.
The first thing to say is that this novel is really a polemic. It’s high concept and the central message is that being famous is a trap and being an influencer is not all glamour. I can’t argue with the message, but my big issue with the book is that there is absolutely no subtly here. Turner is not interested in exploring the shades of grey within the issues, which is why the influencer characters are all two-dimensional at best, and little more than names on the page at works.
The story is narrated through Harper’s point of view and I did not believe in her as a teenage girl. Turner seems to be going for irony with Harper wanting to be an influencer when she doesn’t have any friends in real life and her only on-line friend is Cady, who she has never met in person and I think this would have been fine had someone at some point called her out on it. Unfortunately that doesn’t happen, which is a shame because the only pushback Harper gets to her goal is from Belle and Turner hasn’t done enough to establish their relationship beyond Harper’s envy and Belle’s apparent obliviousness towards her own privilege. There is no sense of authenticity to these scenes, which also means that when Harper is tempted to throw Belle under a bus during the Island of Influencers games, there’s no emotional impact to it.
Similarly, there is little sense of any relationship between Harper and Cady, who is reduced to essentially being a cheerleader or the second half of the book. My other issue with Harper is that she makes stupid decisions for reasons solely designed to drive the plot forward, e.g. she makes a deal with a rival in the final quarter even though she doesn’t like them and has said that she doesn’t trust them. I don’t have an issue with unreliability in itself but there needs to be some kind of internal logic driving it and Turner just doesn’t convey that at all.
The Island of Influencers game format itself is a bit silly. Turner deliberately references THE HUNGER GAMES several times and there are obvious comparisons, e.g. each influencer has the chance to impress corporate sponsors who can in turn give them equipment to be used in the game. The difference is that instead of being killed, the influencers are subjected to humiliating tasks instead (think I’M A CELEBRITY). This brings me to my next problem with the book, which is when you learn what is driving the whole contest, the format makes absolutely zero sense. In fact, the last thing you would expect the antagonist to want is to subject the influences to anything that could adversely impact their respective brands because it goes to the look-forward value of their propositions. I could also come up with several arguments as to why the antagonist’s plan can be pushed back on - not least to do with the fact that the majority (but not all) of the influences are under 18, which means that under both Scots and English law, the contracts they signed are not enforceable.
Tied in with this is that Turner portrays a pretty reductive view of what influencing is. Each influencer is reduced to flogging products direct on camera and while I do not disagree that this and sponsorship is part of the influencer lifestyle, increasingly it relies on a sense of authenticity. None of the influencers in the book have any sense of authenticity and nor do they discuss it - instead they all focus on how they are deliberately portraying something that they are not and that again just kept taking me out of the story.
All in all, I wish that I had enjoyed this more than I did because I think there’s a lot of scope for a good YA thriller about influencer culture, but this book just did not have the nuance or internal logical consistency to work for me.
The Verdict:
Monique Turner’s debut YA thriller is a clunky polemic about influencing culture and how celebrity is a trap. It’s an interesting high concept - especially given how pervasive influencing is - but the execution left me cold, particularly the inconsistencies in Harper’s character and her relationship with Belle - while the influencer contest is flat, not helped by the cardboard characterisation of the influencers, which makes them interchangeable.
ISLAND OF INFLUENCERS was released in the United Kingdom on 13 February 2025. Thanks to the Amazon Vine Programme for the review copy of this book.