Horror Featuring Social Media Influencers

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When Camille Deming isn’t cooking, cleaning, homesteading or posting about her tradwife lifestyle, she's wishing for a baby. Camille fears that without one, her relationship with her husband will suffer and her social media will never grow out of its infancy. Out of desperation, she makes a wish on a decrepit, mysterious well. What follows is an unsettling experience, but that doesn't matter because her wish comes true. Camille is having a baby and her life is finally falling into place. Never mind that her pregnancy is developing freakishly fast or that she is ravenous for raw meat...

Ah, social media influencers. Sometimes it seems like they have life figured out. Making money out of living your life? Monetizing the process of doing yoga or cleaning your house? Getting paid to recommend outfits or beauty products or office supplies? Nice job if you can get it.

But when you dig a little deeper, you begin to see it’s not all aesthetic morning routines or GymShark sponsorships. The flip side of making money living your life is having to be on all the time. It’s people thinking they know you because you post a 30 minute video a week. It’s having to develop a tough skin because a portion of the comments will be ugly, and (if you’re part of a minority) often bigoted.

That’s not to say that influencers are saints, obviously. Often, the callouts on the comments are warranted. But when you think about the cost of living your life in the public eye, well, it just doesn’t seem all that appealing anymore. The influencer characters in the seven horror books gathered here figure that out the hard, possibly murderous, way. Warning: you will never look at your favorite lifestyle YouTuber or Instagram chef the same way again.

Half thriller, half horror, this book follows Julie Chan, a supermarket cashier who takes on her late sister’s life—literally. Chloe was an influencer with millions of followers, so it’s only natural (or so Julie thinks) to step into her place. Only, Julie should have considered that pretending to be a woman who died under mysterious circumstances might not be her smartest move.

Remy and Alicia are not the happiest of couples, but something holds them together: a shared obsession with Jen, a jewelry designer who used to work with Remy. Neither of them expected to run into her, much less be invited to a surfing trip to the Hamptons with her and her circle. Remy and Alicia do all they can to fit in, but soon, things are spiralling out of control.

As a men’s fitness influencer, Dallas Corso has it all… except a moral compass. When his cruel words drive one of his followers to suicide, Dallas attempts to make amends, but all he accomplishes is a slew of supernatural occurrences that don’t just threaten his career, but also his life.

Noelle Layne is a budding influencer: a horror buff who leads a movie club about the genre and has her heart set on podcasting. Naturally, when she plans a Halloween party, she goes all out. In this case, “all out” involves a possibly murderous clown who is taking his role as Pennywise just a little too seriously.

When two people compete over who gets to tell the same story, things get ugly. When those competing are two former friends, one of whom is a social media influencer, it gets uglier yet. But when the research topic is a young woman who was murdered centuries ago after being accused of witchcraft, things get terrifying. Who will tell Ilsbeth’s story, Elena or Cathy? And what price will they pay for it?

When ten teen influencers are invited to Unknown Island, it isn’t for their reels or their follower counts…it’s for their secrets. Bad secrets, secrets that—as far as someone is concerned—need to be punished. Secrets that might ensure none of them make it back home.

Sunny Lee, Candie, and Mina were inseparable. But when Mina jumped to her death, everything changed. Now, former popstar Sunny attends a K-pop workshop in order to see and, hopefully, make amends with Candie. But she finds something far more chilling instead.

Want to read more about influencers? Check out these 8 influencer thrillers that show not all glitters is gold, or these Latine book content creators to follow, and not just during Latine Heritage Month for real life influencers.