Title: The Influencers
Author: S.V. Leonard
Genre: Mystery, Thriller, Suspense
First published: March 10th 2022
Publisher: Canelo
Finished reading: February 21st 2022
Pages: 273

“Appearance can be deceiving; especially on the internet.”

*** A copy of this book was kindly provided to me by Netgalley and Canelo in exchange for an honest review. Thank you! ***

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S.V. Leonard‘s debut The Islanders is on my list of 2021 favorites, so of course I couldn’t resist reading her newest story as soon as possible. I always like a social media angle in my thrillers, and having a focus on a true crime blogger and influencers in general sounded like a match made in heaven for me. And while I do think that her debut is a lot stronger, there is no doubt that I still very much enjoyed my time with The Influencers.

There is no doubt that the social media angle is the star of the show here. Most of the main characters in play are influencers and are active on multiple platforms. The murder victim Stella Knight is a hugely popular influencer with a lot of skeletons in the closet, and the main suspects are mostly either influencers or have a close connection to her. Then we have our true crime blogger Maggie Shaw of course; we see the events through her eyes as she investigates what happened to Stella. There is also the partial setting on the boat celebrating the Influencer Of The Year awards, and last but not least we have the little snippets taken from Maggie’s blog The Social Sleuth at the beginning of each chapter.

The plot itself mostly reads like an amateur murder investigation where Maggie goes against the orders of the police and interviews multiple suspects by herself anyway. I personally wondered how credible this would be and how she wasn’t arrested for obstruction of justice at some point… I also wasn’t sure how believable it was for her to trust a complete stranger and investigate along with him (especially since he is such an obvious suspect). Thankfully, there were lots of twists and secrets to keep you busy along the way, and they were partially successful in distracting you from the lack of credibility.

 I also had some issues with the main characters; mostly because they weren’t exactly likeable and there was just something about Maggie that didn’t convince me from the start. I did like the idea of her being a true crime blogger and wanting to investigate a murder that happened while she was close. That does make for a great premise and the social media angle in general is what kept me reading. I was a bit disappointed to have guessed the truth about the ‘explosive’ ending quite early on, but that might just be my own fault for reading too many thrillers in the first place. As a whole, The Influencers is still a very entertaining thriller and worth your time if you like the sound of the premise.

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