under the influence

Anyone who has been on the internet knows who May Iverson is. As an influencer, “Mother May I” has millions of followers who watched as she raised her five daughters and showed off her luxurious lifestyle in video after video. Now the Iverson girls are grown up and living their best lives. Oldest daughter April is running her own company. The twins, June and July, known to their followers as The Summer Girls, are following in their mother’s footsteps as influencers. January works as a lighting designer in the theater, spending her time in the dark, and youngest March has disappeared altogether.

Now that the March siblings have all moved out, May has remarried. Her new husband is August, which would seem to make him the ideal addition to the family, but instead he is selfish. He spends his time working out and trying to sell his protein powder. He argues with the Iversons, and May’s daughters can’t understand what she sees in him. And then he is killed. And all the Iverson followers on the internet want to know who did it.

When August was killed, someone also poured out all of May’s colorful bottles of alcohol and set the place on fire. The house wasn’t destroyed, but much of May’s closet was. It wasn’t too difficult to replace her clothes and accessories, as brands immediately started sending her packages with their merchandise for her to post about. But after a week or two, new videos start popping up online. Or, not so much new videos as old videos.

The videos are from when the Iverson siblings were young. They aren’t the edited videos that were posted. They were taken on a different phone or a home security camera, but they show what really happened at that moment in time. The videos show the reality behind the perfect veneer May always showed. But where are the videos coming from? And do they have anything to do with August’s death?

The story is told in chapters alternating between May and her daughters, the followers of Mother May I, the followers of The Summer Girls, and a mysterious guy who is seen hanging around the sisters that the internet has named Luke Sweatshirt. There are internet trolls and former friends coming for May and lots and lots of speculation about what happened. But in order for the internet and the police to see the whole picture of what happened that day, and what lead up to it, the Iversons all have to give up their secrets. And they have a lot of secrets.

The Influencers is a fascinating look at influencer culture. The idea of a family whose perfect seeming lives take up such a large space in popular culture feels very prescient, and it makes for a powerful story. I really enjoyed watching this family deal with the struggles in front of them, see how they came together and how they came apart. The story seemed at first to be light and bubbly, but as the chapters went by, it had a lot more to say about how the curated reality that so many present and so many others consume affects us all. This is an entertaining read rolled around an important message, and I loved it so much.

Egalleys for The Influencers were provided by The Dial Press through NetGalley, with many thanks, but I liked it so much, I bought a copy on Kindle.