When I heard about a new Sara Shepard book, I immediately wanted to read it. I love gossipy thrillers like Pretty Little Liars and The Elizas. In Influence, written with coauthor Lilia Buckingham, the girls are all Instagram models, which I thought would add a fun social media twist to a dramatic, backstabby story. I follow a lot of themed Instagram accounts: book cover flatlays, of course, but also quarantine baking fails, art history memes, found object jewelry, etc., and I thought it would be fun to see the Instagram lifestyle.

The narration changes between different characters, but since they’re all kinda generic and vacuous influencers, it’s hard to keep track of who is speaking. The girls angst a lot about the difficulties of being a brand, but I didn’t really see what their brands are or what made any of their IG accounts different from each other. At parties, less famous influencers tried to take photos with more famous ones, while the most famous influencers were sad about going publicity parties all the time. I found myself skimming, and I never skim in a Sara Shepard novel! Gotta catch all the details and try to guess the twists!

Mostly, this didn’t work for me because there was nothing aspirational about these influencers. They weren’t passionate about makeup or photography or community or really anything. The girls were famous for being famous, and even the secretly-tortured side didn’t work because there was nothing particularly bad about being Instagram famous. Give me Collette Bing any day!

One of the influencers is a former tween star (Oh! I did enjoy the descriptions of a thinly-veiled Disney Channel!), famous for wearing cute rainbows, who longs to wear black leather and Louboutins. A real teen might well try this identity experimentation, but such a heavy 180° feels overdone in fiction.  Same thing with the Puppy Girl burning building rescue, Delilah not seeing or recognizing Jack, Delilah never getting recognized in public until she wants to prove that she’s insta-famous, etc. There’s no one event that goes too far, just a series of too-perfect coincidences that start to strain credulity and also start to get boring.

Finally, I wasn’t sure if this book was supposed to be for kids. The murder(s), secret pregnancy, and evil frenemy actions more made this feel like YA, but the story also ties off with a heavy-handed Be Yourself! message, in an afterschool-special kind of way. Maybe this is the new Goosebumps, middle-grades fiction, with a body count.