I didn't connect with this one as well as I was hoping. The plot was a bit boring! The characters were just ok.

The audio was fine though!

3 stars

One Lucky Subscriber by Kellye Garrett is short story number five of six in the Busybodies Collection where "There’s A Mystery Around Every Corner!"

This was a fun little mystery centering around a social media broadcasted game of hide and seek in a mall after hours. Garrett's writing had a sinister edge, feeling atmospheric and slightly claustrophobic. Main character Kennedy remained true to her greater goal, making each and every decision to benefit her younger brother. The ending felt a bit anti-climactic, but I enjoyed the flip-flop a couple of the contestants made during the story!

Jordan Cobb did a really great job narrating, continuously manipulating her voice to depict the qualities of the various characters!

This series features 40-ish page/hour-ish long books and they're just the sort of story to slip into when you've got just a bit of spare time!

Thank you NetGalley, Brilliance Publishing and Amazon Original Stories for the complimentary audio copy to read and review.

The narration is spectacular but as with the rest of this series, I was bored and didn’t connect with nor care about the characters or what was happening at allll

I love a good short story collection.

Particularly, when there’s a good theme throughout.

This one was the most ‘modern’ of the short stories. Influencers, YouTubers, and Views. I was expecting more of a twist at the end, but I still enjoyed it.

Thanks to NetGalley and Brilliance Audio for this mini-ARC.

This short story felt like the perfect blend of a Mr. Beast high-stakes challenge and a FaZe overnight adventure—except this time, we’re deep inside a mall, and the stakes feel even higher because we’re witnessing it through the perspective of an average-joe participant, not an over-the-top Internet personality. The story wastes no time diving into the action, with characters and plot swiftly introduced, making it easy to get hooked right from the start. I especially enjoyed the mystery element that underscores the story as the game progresses—it felt very believable, given what I know and have seen from the YouTube community. Usually, we see these wild stunts from the lens of a video, which often glosses over the real human element behind the content, so this book felt particularly grounded. Fun, punchy, and a quick read, this one kept me on my toes. The narration was well done, I felt like I could truly picture the character play out in my mind. Overall a good little story!

This was a fun who-dun-it set in the middle of the America Dream Mall. Kennedy sticks out like a sore thumb as the last-minute competitor in a YouTuber game of hide and seek. If she can stay hidden until midnight, she'll walk away with a fortune. But everything goes awry when the head influencer "Kid" is pushed off the railing. Kennedy quickly tries to unravel what really happened before someone else can accuse her of any wrong doing on their live streams.

If you've watched any of these viral competitions online, then you'll enjoy the insider feeling of this story. The narration by Jordon Cobb plays the bewildered Kennedy very well against the "video bros". She seems to be the only voice of reason next to these clout chasers. The final twist is one that would make fans of Oceans 8 chuckle.

An influencer mystery with some creepy vibes mixed in.

It read almost like it was a horror novel but then it really wasn’t.

I liked the main character and enjoyed following along and having the story play out.

Entertaining short story YA and adults too. If you are familiar with you tube channels, influencers and reality TV.
As a contestant on an youtubers channel playing hide and seek. A mystery unfolds of whodunnit when the creator is found injured. Cute story. I will be sure to read the other books in the series.

One Lucky Subscriber by Kellye Garrett is part of Busybodies - a collection of short, quirky mysteries.

I wasn't familiar with Kellye Garrett so I was excited about this one but sadly, it didn't hit the mark for me. I did like Garrett's writing style but the story itself fell flat. It wasn't really a mystery, so it felt out of place among the other stories in the series. I found it hard to get through despite how short it was.

This one's worth reading if you're diving into the full Busybodies series but I don't recommend it as a standalone.

3.3 rounded down to 3.

I listened to this twice, thinking I might have missed something in the story but no, I didn’t miss a thing. It’s a very short story and not well developed. There’s a little bit of a mystery but not much and no character development whatsoever. The twist at the end was good but I didn’t connect to any of the characters.

Organised by an influencer who has just reached a certain target number of followers, a diverse group of social media players - and one lucky subscriber to his shenanigans - are invited to participate in a game he's organised that gives one of them a chance of winning a huge jackpot.

But Kid, the influencer who has organised it all, then does something unexpected that sends the whole initiative careering off the tracks...

This is an entertaining short story that delivers a sucker punch at the end. But not the punch that you are expecting. Namely it is not really about whodunit, as much as why they've done it. Short and decidedly sweet 'n sour!