A book for our times! A dark and twisty novel meets reality TV and no doubt anyone who has ever watched a reality TV show can see that just maybe we are one small step away from this happening IRL. The concept of this book was gripping, the characters were nasty (wish there was at least ONE I could get behind...) and it started out strong. Near the 3/4 part of the book, I found myself thinking - not unlike I have in the handful of reality shows I've attempted to watch - enough already! Get to the point! Who "wins"? And sadly....the ending was disappointing. Where's the after show???

I'm giving this book a 3.5 but since I can't use half ratings on here, I'll just write it in.

This book Follows 6 people who are on a deserted island ready to become the most "iconic" person on reality tv, for everyone to watch and judge. During the 3 weeks, the contestants earn points by winning competitions and gaining positive public opinion, and the person with the most points wins.
One of them died on camera for everyone to see, now someone must pay for the crime. They all have their own motives for wanting Rhys Sutton dead but who among them is capable of killing.. just the day before his murder he was the most hated man on television. Now no one will win the title or money.

For me this felt like a reality tv show but in book form which wasn't badly done at all. I enjoyed the way she made it come to life and made it feel like I was watching it all happen. I didn't have any attachment or love for any character so that's why it's not higher rating for me. I feel like this book was more of a fun read over a serious one just like reality tv show is, so if your expecting more you might not get it. If you don't like or care for reality tv this book may not be for you, but if you enjoy it this might be a good one to read. You get drama, relationships, gossip, and so much more. Will be reading more by this author though because I did enjoy this one and would still recommend it to others.

(Thank you to Sourcebooks Landmark, Bea Fitzgerald and NetGalley for the ARC in exchange for my honest review. This book will be released on August 27, 2024.)

I liked the beginning of this book. it was intriguing and twisty. Most of the book I really liked but it was near the ending where it sort of felt like things didn’t work for me. There is a certain kind of ending that I can’t stand that, of course, this book has. If the story had a different ending it would have been a 4 star read. I wasn’t a fan of this ending so instead it gets 3 stars.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the arc.

DNF at 29% for now.

I am not sure if I just started this at an odd time while I was in the middle of too many other books but so far the book feels confusing. There are too many characters and either I completely missed when they were all introduced and explained or it just was not done very well. I found it very difficult to keep everyone straight and some of the characters blended together. For that reason I found myself not wanting to pick it up to finish.

The way the story is told with each episode a chapter is unique and something I enjoyed. The premise of this book sounds like something I would like and I am very much open to giving this book another shot.

Not going to post my review on Goodreads because I may read this closer to the publication date and give it another chance.

Thank you for this arc.
I love drama filled thriller mysteries. This one was filled with all the drama and sass that comes along with average celebrities on a reality tv show. It kept me guessing till the end.

Thank you NetGalley and SOURCEBOOKS Landmark for allowing me to read this book early.the book was enjoyable and I would recommend it to anyone who wants a more modern twist on the traditional murder mystery.

“Twelve million people watched Rhys Sutton die. ”
Here are reasons to read the thriller book:

Reality island - 6 contestants gather for a reality show on an island
Dynamics - this show is streamed live as well as being edited, and the premise is to be ICONIC which means relationship dynamics are front and center
Death - but there is a death, and while it does take place on camera, the question is, was it murder?

This month’s Youtube reading vlog (posted May 15th) is all about things that take place on an island. While this book doesn’t come out until August, it was a perfect subject matter for this vlog. However, I am not sure how effective it was at being a thriller. The plot went around and around the same subject and inevitably became tedious. I’m not even totally sure of the outcome of the mystery to be honest. I have not read anything by this author before but I am not sure if this book was successful at being a thriller.

In the book Then Things Went Dark by Bea Fitzgerald is about six quasi-celebrities getting stuck on an island and having to do challenges so in the end they could be the ultimate winner of $250,000. All want fame and fortune there is an Aris, a tech guru, an activist a singer from a popular band an actor and a chef. There’s two females and four males and Reese the actor seems willing to sleep with them all but settles on the Instagrammer and The Eris but only after he has slept with the chef Isco. Everyone except for the rockstar Theo seems to have ulterior motives for being on the show or at least at first in the end all their intentions are questioned. The challenge is given to the six contestants by the show lack morals so to be successful they either had to ignore their own or be glad they had none to begin with. In the book every other chapter have the detectives trying to figure out who killed loverboy an actor Reese. I thought the author did a great job capturing the real personalities of the type of people who would one go on the show into vying for fame and fortune. I found this book to be very intriguing especially Theo who was such an interesting character I wish the author would’ve gave them easier names I mean Reese, Theo and Joseph or not hard but the other names were ridiculous. This review however is not on the names of the characters but on the book which I definitely recommend and although I thought it could’ve been better I still read it all in one go and for the most part enjoyed it I just don’t like a book when there is no one to root for I want to thank Sorsa books landmark for my free arc copy via NetGalley please forgive any mistakes as I am blind and dictate my review.

Thank you Netgalley and Sourcebooks Landmark for an ARC in exchange for an honest review. This book comes out August 27th, 2024.

There are so so so many things I enjoyed about this book from the romance, to the reality tv aspect of it, to the police interrogations, to the drama...but what I loved most about it, is how wonderfully tied together everything became throughout the book. I loved all of these characters and their desire to win this competition so much that it almost makes me hate them. All of them had something to hide which made them even more loathsome. Out of everything I loved about this book, I do wish we had a police interrogation or some sort of epilogue to explain what happened to these characters after Rhys Sutton's death or at least after the final episode of the show. Overall, I did really enjoy this book, the characters, and especially the drama.

Rating: 5/5 stars but if I could rate it higher it would be an ♾️/5

Reality television gone wrong makes for great thrillers. Iconic streams 24/7 to a loyal group of fans and millions of them see the moments leading up to the death of a contestant. The book is a combination of episodes of the show, feedback from viewers, and scenes with the two officers investigating the death as a possible murder. I had a hard time getting into this one. The premise is entertaining, but there's not a lot of suspense building up since you know exactly what's going to happen, just not who's responsible for it.

The latest reality show, Iconic, introduces six contestants who have 30 days to solidify themselves as the most "iconic" person and win the prize money. It seems the more drama they create, the better their ratings are. Araminta, Isko, Rhys, Kalpana, Jerome and Theo all bring their own fame and reasons for wanting to win the show. On an island where there are cameras running 24/7, you have to wonder what will go down and what's even real. We have the usual reality show drama, romance and escapades until one of them ends up dead and the other five contestants are suspects in his murder.

I think this was a really enjoyable book. I liked the plot, the characters and the writing. I do have to say the format (whether it was the way it ended up on the Kindle or just the way it was written) was a little off. I didn't really separate what was the episodes of Iconic from the rest of the book, like the investigation or what was happening after. I was a little confused by the format. There was a lot of drama, there was a lot of suspense, there was a lot of focus on many different romances which wasn't really what I was looking for, but overall it was an enjoyable and pretty quick read.

Rated up for 3.5 Stars.

Thank you to NetGalley, Sourcebooks Landmark and Bea Fitzgerald for the eARC of Then Things Went Dark. Publication date for Then Things Went Dark by Bea Fitzgerald is 27 August 2024.

Iconic is a new reality show where six D-listers have a month to become the most “iconic” person in the house and win a quarter of a million dollars. The contestants earn points by winning competitions and gaining positive public opinion, and the person with the most points wins. We have:

Araminta Yaxley-Carter, Influencer, London, UK
Isko Andrada, Chef, Vancouver, Canada
Rhys Sutton, Actor, New York, USA
Kalpana Mahajan, Activist, Perth, Australia
Jerome Frances, Entrepreneur, San Francisco, USA
Theo Newman, Frontman of RiotParade, Manchester, UK

These six all have their own reasons for being there, and they’re pretty typical for someone who is on a show like this. It’s set up like Big Brother, with cameras everywhere doing a 24/7 live stream, a confessional booth for everyone to vent about each other, and big personalities on a small island competing for television air time. It starts with the normal sexcapades and showmances, drinking games, getting to know each other, but three weeks in, one of them is dead and the other five are considered suspects.

My problem with this book isn’t the plot, the characters or the writing - I think this was a very creative story; it just had a very disjointed format. Some parts were almost like a screenplay of the night’s episode. Some episodes were written more as if they were happening in real time. Some parts were written normally from the present perspective, but then social media comments, confessional comments and the Interpol investigation would be thrown in odd places and the cohesiveness would be lost. I felt like it needed more continuity between the different aspects of the book, or a more defined layout.

That being said, this ended up being quite enjoyable! The characters are all very hateable (in an entertaining way) and I liked the reality show lean. I had decided on giving this 3.5 stars, and the way I would round it would be based on the ending … which turned out to be fantastic and worth the wait. 3.5, rounded up!

(Thank you to Sourcebooks Landmark, Bea Fitzgerald and NetGalley for the ARC in exchange for my review. This book is slated to be released on August 27, 2024.)

this one…wasn’t for me. the concept was very interesting, and i was excited to see how this group dynamic would play out. i think there is something so thrilling about insufferable people stuck in isolation.
unfortunately, a lot of this didn’t work for me. the pacing was slow, i felt like i wasn’t getting anywhere with the story. it felt like nothing was really happening? the tweets didn’t really lend anything to the narrative, and neither did the parts with interpol/the investigators. they didn’t gain any traction or provide anything we didn’t already get from the “episodes” so it felt fluffy.
i don’t think the characters were truly fleshed out either. i couldn’t get a read on any of them, nor did it feel like they were fully formed characters. their motivations, their personalities, it all fluctuated depending on the needs of where the story was meant to be going. i LOVE an unlikeable and/or insufferable characters, but there just wasn’t anything compelling me to care about their journey through this story. and the blurb calling the group best friend, girlfriend, rival, etc—girlfriend was obvious, but the others didn’t have strong enough relationships to rhys for me to believe that.
the formula of the show itself also didn’t make much sense to me. i didn’t quite understand who would greenlight this kind of show (let alone the hr nightmare it was). and like, you have to be so beyond self absorbed to consider being on it, and yeah, these characters were, but they didn’t have anything else going for them. what was the strategy, what were their greater goals? the points system and the purpose of the challenges just didn’t make sense to me. it actually felt like a sting operation disguised as a tv show, like these people weren’t really being broadcasted at all, it was fake.
i really did want to enjoy this, and i’m bummed it didn’t impress me. i think it tried really hard to be a lot of things, to throw the reader off, to be mysterious and misleading, but i just couldn’t keep up with the point of it.

I wasn’t a fan of this one. I thought the concept was really cool but the writing style wasn’t for me. I felt like the chapters were super long and should have been labeled better. At times I didn’t know who was saying what or what was really going on. I felt lost. I also didn’t really care for the characters and their personalities, I couldn’t really connect with any of them and this made me not really care about the book or how it ended.

Thank you NetGalley and Sourcebooks Landmark for my advanced readers copy. This is my honest and voluntary opinion.

I wanted to love this one, it’s such a cool concept but it didn’t work for me.

The book cuts between the show, social media posts and a police investigation without any sort of break which made for an awkward reading flow. The characters are all pretty unlikeable (which I believe is the point) but they weren’t even interesting.

The ending was also super anticlimactic.

(2.5 stars rounded up)

Thank you to Sourcebooks Landmark for this copy.

Super choppy writing - the episode, online comments, and the investigation should have titles within the episode. Sometimes I’m not sure who’s taking or what they’re doing. The characters were giving very small backgrounds but not a lot of defining characteristics and I had to remind myself who each character was as the story jumped around. I thought the premise of this was great and was really excited. At the begging I liked the confessional section and then what was happening real time - but as I read on, I wish it was formatted differently. Certain times I didn’t feel like the characters responses made sense for what was going on. A lot of additional fluff - I almost stopped reading this multiple times and honestly wish I did. It wasn’t worth it to finish. The book is about a reality show and throughout the book it’s constantly mentioned how it’s just a game, image and clout, but then made a lot of the characters have very deep thoughts - it felt contradicting. I was confused about the second story line happening with the detectives which was just extra fluff.

This is dramatic and entertaining, but some parts had me scratching my head because they wouldn’t happen in real life. I didn’t love it but I did appreciate a reality tv show on an island, I love reality tv

I tried this trope with Ruth Ware’s One Perfect Couple. She’s one of my favorite authors, and the story didn’t work for me even written by her. I didn’t enjoy this book.

This book started out a little shallow. It is a competition between icons in various industries, and there was not much detail nor did I get pulled in to the competition. It felt like it was just a side event, the main event of the whole thing were the relationships between the players. The game itself was not very exciting or entertaining. As you get to know the characters, you get more emotionally involved, though the characters were so widely varied in their motivations, personalities and characters.

Once I got into the story, the killing of one contestant, it was interesting to see where it all was leading. I love a book that surprises me with the ending and this one did. I am usually pretty good at figuring out where a story line is going, and I was wrong with this book. I appreciated that.

Overall, I did enjoy the book and it took me a few chapters to be engaged to where I wanted to know what happens at the end. I think if the game was more believable, and maybe some of the relationships were more believable, it would have earned 5 stars.

One of my favourite sub genres is the reality show on an island and this one was that and then some.

With a murder revealed in the first couple of pages, you get to watch the episodes of the show as they aired on network tv. I could easily find myself rooting for some characters and hated others. I loved the formatting of the book for sure!

Locked room mysteries are so much fun as you see who is lying and who’s not.

Thank you NetGalley, Sourcebooks Landmark and the author for a copy of the eARC for an honest review.