The Perfect Ones by Nicole Hackett is a timely story about the dark side of social media and the extent people will go to get followers and likes. The mystery centres around a group of instagram influencers who are on a promotional trip to Iceland. However, after two days Alabama Wood goes missing and everyone is a suspect in her disappearance. Her best friend Celeste Reed and star influencer Hollie Goodwin have secrets to hide and are guilty of wrongs to Alabama, and potentially her murder.

What I liked about the book:
-the setting of Iceland
-the toxic world of influencers and social media where nothing is as it seems
-the exploration of what people will do to become a celebrity
-toxic friendships and how women pit themselves against one another
-chapters with different POVs

What I disliked about the book:
-the pacing seemed slow especially in the middle but picked up by the end
-unlikeable characters that I couldn’t relate to, I found them shallow with very little relatable characteristics
-abrupt, open ended conclusion…I was invested in it then it left me wanting something more to happen

My rating: 3 out of 5

My final takeaway: I found the premise of the book intriguing but it was slow and fell flat. If you are a fan of the dark side of celebrity and social media then this book may interest you.

Many thanks to NetGalley and Crooked Lane Books for this eARC.

I received an ARC of this book from Netgalley in exchange for my honest review.

REVIEW TO FOLLOW.

"I received a complimentary copy of this book. Opinions expressed in this review are completely my own."

This book was fantastic! I was honestly forgetting their was a mystery involved as I was really into the different relationships, egos and stories. Each character honestly me guessing until the end. Highly recommend 👌.

I didn’t love this. I guess I also thought it was more of a thriller so it fell flat for me. I didn’t like the characters but I did like the ending.

AS CAWPILE:
Characters: 3 | Atmosphere: 1 | Writing: 5 | Plot: 5 | Intrigue: 4 | Logic: 9 | Enjoyment: 1
Total: 4.00

To say this thriller was the opposite of its genre name would be putting it lightly. There were no high stakes, and the twist was predictable from 10% in. I found that I didn't care about any of these characters, and none of them had enough motive to be at risk for being responsible for Alabama's death. The glorification of social media felt less than researched, and as a social media manager, I found the examples of this laughable. The entire thing was boring, and I found myself dragging through the final quarter. Was it worth reading it to the end? Not really. This tale felt underwhelming.

The whole time I was reading this, I was going to give it 3.5 stars, but I didn’t know how I’d round. Then I got to the ending, read the twist I should have seen coming but didn’t, and I decided to round up for that and this being a debut novel. The atmosphere was great, the writing was great, but the story just didn’t hit. Still, it was an entertaining plot, and a good look at how social media can affect mental health.

Thank you Netgalley for the eARC of The Perfect Ones in exchange for an honest review.

I rather enjoyed this book, although I wouldn't really classify it as a thriller, for me it didn't quite hit that threshold. I enjoyed the disjointed timelines that followed the three main characters. This to me is the perfect beach read, it is interesting, easy to read, and the ending caught me off guard. I hope she writes more in the future with these characters.

The plot about famous influencers visiting Iceland for a brand trip and one woman going missing, presumed dead, peaked my interest immediately. A few things fell short for me, though, and made the story drag on after the halfway point. Alabama's disappearance storyline didn't really hook me, although her backstory did a bit. She was clearly going through something mentally, but the fact that it wasn't ever really described or diagnosed bothered me. While Celeste had the most relatable backstory with her family and suspicions of her daughter being on the autism spectrum, all her flashbacks didn't really add to the mystery of the story at all. I liked that the author wrote Hollie in as seemingly perfect from the outside but struggling with an eating disorder, but the way Alabama over-obsessed with her and was over-involved about Hollie's life was super weird to me.

I was really hoping the mystery part of the novel would pick up and had been fleshed out more, but I feel as if the thriller aspect was more of an after-thought and the book was more of an expose of the dark side of social media. Taking the thriller part out and just looking at the women's lives behind the scenes of social media I feel would have made this a stronger novel in my opinion. This book was just okay for me!

Thank you to NetGalley and Crooked Lane Books for an advanced copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

It’s 6:28am .

I set my alarm for 5:00am so I could get up and squeeze in some reading time .

What a mistake

I have concluded reading The Perfect Ones but now I am shell shocked and find myself paralyzed within my own emotions

I’m a fan of Nicole Hackett. Having been introduced last year through bookstagram, I had been eagerly waiting for her debut to release and devour . When the marketing team reached out to see if I wanted to be a part of this cover reveal I instantly felt the full body tingles and eagerly accepted .

Hackett tells a story like no other . Her style is captivating and will have you hooked from the very first page . I raced through this book to watch it all come together to leave the ultimate shock factor .

This is a must when it comes to pre-ordering.

Teaser :

Everyone wants to be them, but internet fame comes at a price…

Two days after arriving in Iceland for a promotional trip, Instagram influencer Alabama Wood goes missing. With no leads, the Icelandic police start their investigation by focusing on the two influencers seemingly closest to Alabama on the trip: Celeste Reed, Alabama’s best friend of ten years, and Hollie Goodwin, fitness guru and Alabama's unwilling idol.

Celeste and Alabama have grown apart recently because Celeste has been too distracted by her five-year-old’s behavioral issues and her husband’s refusal to admit that there’s a problem. What Celeste doesn’t tell them is how she has been coping with these worries and how it involves Alabama in ways no one would guess.

On the outside, Hollie appears to have everything—the husband, the body, and over one million Instagram followers. In reality, however, Hollie came to Iceland to escape the implosion of her life behind the screen. The only person who suspected something amiss behind Hollie’s precisely filtered pictures is Alabama.

As secrets are revealed and loyalties are tested, debut author Nicole Hackett asks: do we control our online image, or does it control us?

Decent mystery with some twists and turns. Didn't like the cast that much. Ending was a little predictable but still an enjoyable thriller

A group of social media influencers head to Iceland for a branded promotional trip. Shortly after they arrive, a popular Instagram influencer named Alabama Wood goes missing. The police investigation focuses on Alabama’s fellow influencers, particularly her bestie Celeste Reed and her idol Hollie Goodwin. Both of these women have secrets to keep, but did they have anything to do with Alabama’s disappearance?

I’m a mystery and thriller lover, and I’ve also been loving books about the dark side of social media, so this book should have hit the sweet spot for me. The writing is good and some of the characters are very well developed, but in the end this book delivered only lukewarm Instagram-adjacent suspense. The mystery of what happened to Alabama isn’t central enough to the story to be a thriller, nor are any other characters ever in danger. The social media influencer angle was compelling but left me wanting more. We all know that everyone’s feeds are full of filtered (fake) perfection, so of course these ladies are hiding things, but I wanted more of the darkness that was motivating some of the characters.

Many thanks to NetGalley and Crooked Lane Books for providing me an advance copy of this book.

I was really pumped to read a mystery/thriller with influencer culture at the forefront. Especially with all the news lately about brand trips, this seemed SO timely.

Instead I feel like our characters were mostly interchangeable and their status as “influencers” didn’t play into the story that much. It was just a way for them to get to Iceland, but there was nothing about their occupations that couldn’t have been easily exchanged with another career.

There were too many red herrings simply for the sake of misleading the audience and for a short book, it felt incredibly long. Lots of pacing issues. With the type of characters we were presented with there could have been so much drama and intrigue but every “dramatic” issue that was alluded to generally fizzled out.

Not a book I would recommend.

I can definitely see that this book will have an excited audience--but it just didn't do it for me. In looking at the comparative titles, I can see that those also have not been books that have resonated with me, so I don't think it reflects on this novel that I didn't fall in love with it.

As someone who used to be super intrigued with influencer brand trips in the mid 2010's, I was super excited to read a mystery based on an influencer trip gone awry. This story mainly follows three influencers with different online personas that are invited on a brand trip to Iceland. Although they show a perfectly curated version of themselves online, we slowly see the troubles they are dealing with behind the scenes.

Hollie is a mega lifestyle influencer with a huge following that is dealing with relationship turmoil and a secret that could tarnish her shiny Instagram image. Celeste appears to have built her online presence by posting her authentic self, however is going through a difficult time with her young daughter, due to atypical behaviours. Alabama, who has been friends with Celeste since college, is struggling to accept her place in the influencer world and is willing to do anything to get her follower count up.

This story starts off intriguing as Alabama is missing with no leads. Each chapter goes between the different women's POV's and backtracks months before the trip. We see their mental health and family struggles, and the lengths they go to cover it up. I felt as though some of the storylines were just there for filler and didn't contribute to the story at all. In particular, the storyline with Celeste trying to get an autism spectrum diagnosis for her daughter felt dragged out and really out of place in this type of story. I am all for disability representation, but the way this part was written did not feel in line with this storyline.

The book fell a bit flat towards the middle, I was hoping that the mystery and thriller portion of Alabama being missing would have been fleshed out more. The mystery part of this story was more an after thought to what is really just an expose of the dark side of social media. The setting of Iceland really could have been utilized to add to the mystery. I would label this more of a domestic suspense if anything. The ending isn't perfect, but seemed to be the only way to go in this case. This book was just ok for me!

Thank you to the author, Crooked Lane Books, and Netgalley for an advanced reader copy of this book for a review! This book is set to be published on May 02, 2023.

a well-crafted thriller about influencers and the facade behind the perfect lives! A famous one of them is killed at an all-expenses paid trip. So who really is the culprit? Was a quick, easy read and thoroughly enjoyed it..

When an influencer trip to Iceland results in one of the influencers going missing, the remaining women question their own motives and memories of the night that Alabama Woods disappeared.

The premise of the novel was interesting to me - the "elite" of the social media world, all together in a remote Icelandic village when one disappears? Sounds great for an atmospheric whodunnit!

The issue I ran into, and maybe this is because my own social media presence is lacking, was that I didn't truly care about or connect with any of the main women. The different POVs (Alabama, Celeste, Hollie) all had their own drama going on behind the scenes, true enough, but it was hard to get to know any of the women enough to empathize or connect with their plights.

A stunning novel about an influencer trip to Iceland gone wrong. When one of the influencers goes missing, each influencer questions that night and their lives. But, did that night actually happen, or was it a trick to gain more followers……⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

I received this book from the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.
It's told from the perspective of three middle- age influencers, each of them hiding their own secrets and dealing with their own dilemma.

Hollie and her perfect fitness influencer life style comes to a halt when her problem not only might cause her to lose her fans, maybe even her husband.

Celeste struggles with motherhood, having a different daughter who doesn't fit in.

Alabama, with a shocking plan that made me gasp out loud.

All three of their lives comes together in Iceland, where an influencer even takes place. One of them may never get a second chance to go home.

An enjoyable, breezy read. I'd categorize it as more of a domestic drama than a thriller. The story depicts the secret lives and troubles of three successful influencers who go on a trip to Iceland. One of them disappears and there is some buildup that hints she may have met with foul play. Influencing seems like a terrible way to make a living and I would hate to have my livelihood and ego wrapped up in followers and likes. I enjoyed that the characters had real problems that a reader can relate to. I did grow exasperated with the subplot of Celeste worrying about her obviously autistic daughter being autistic. However, I have an autistic kid, so maybe this was just an obvious retread for me. Alabama is a terrific character and I believe it would have improved the story to have more chapters from her point of view. I wish the ending were more concrete, but overall a solid 3.5 book to pass a rainy afternoon with.

THE PERFECT ONES
By Nicole Hackett
Published by Penguin Random House
€14.99
Date of Publication: May 02, 2023

EVERYWHERE you turn, there is an Influencer telling you to do something, to buy something, to consume something. You may even have got to this review via a link enticing you to read this review, to click on the URL in order to see whether or not this book seems worth purchasing.
Not that I’m an influencer, certainly not in the realm of the three at the focus of The Perfect Ones. Hollie is a queen bee of the lifestyle influencing world, with an, of course, seemingly perfect life. She lives with her husband in Texas.
What her millions of fans don’t see is the dingy kitchen she photographs from flattering angles and in forgiving lighting. Nor do they see the internal conflict she has about having a baby, her increasing disillusionment she has with her line of work and rising rage directed at all and sundry around her.
Celeste and Alabama are close friends from Chicago, who are also present in the influencing world, with success to various degrees. Celeste has found herself a healthy following just by being herself and doing her thing without pretension, whereas Alabama is off-putting and transparent in her neediness.
All three are among a group of fellow Influencers invited to Iceland to take part in a marketing trip for a clothing company. Alabama is the most excited about the trip, and the prospect of meeting her idol Hollie, while Hollie and Celeste can take it or leave it, but ultimately both decide to go, for various reasons. but mostly to temporarily escape their tumultuous home lives.
The group is to stay in a relatively fuss-free hostel and partake in a number of photo-ops, but cracks begin to show in the women’s perfect facades pretty quickly upon arrival. Alabama’s attempts to befriend Hollie are rebuffed, much to Alabama’s indignation, and a blow-up with Celeste doesn’t help calm down matters.
When she goes missing, both Hollie and Celeste are alarmed, distraught and hiding something from the investigating officers. It’s this disappearance that the plot hinges on, while the narratives, from Hollie and Celeste’s points of view, veer between before the trip, during the trip and then after the trip to Iceland.
There is more to The Perfect Ones than merely a thriller set in the glamorous world of online stars. Celeste has concerns about her daughter, who she suspects may be on the Autism spectrum, which is handled with sensitivity and respect.
Hollie’s demons involve a crisis of identity, which is probably more relateable to most than her online presence is. She and Celeste are well-rounded, believable characters that show what is going on behind the scenes of an outwardly perfect life.
Alabama is the caricature Influencer, who is obsessed with likes and follows and who will attempt even the most outrageous of stunts to break through and lap up fans with an as yet to be discovered unique selling point.
The choice to jump from perspective to perspective non-linearly is effective, as the women’s backstories, personalities and motivations come to light. Alabama’s disappearance almost takes second fiddle to the examination of the lives of Celeste and Hollie, although it is the criteria that eventually turns their lives around.
The Perfect Ones is a solid mystery with some well-timed shocks and twists, but its strengths mostly lie in the well-observed character studies of two complicated women. One thing that stood out to me, stylistically, was the overabundance of names rather than pronouns, which served more as a distraction than helpful indicator of who was being referred to.
As far as thrillers go, The Perfect Ones isn’t the most innovative in the genre, however it is a good, well-written read that gives plenty of food for thought.
With thanks to NetGalley for the ARC.