Anna-Marie McLemore has long been a go-to for lyrical, queer YA stories with heart, magic, and sharp social commentary. Their jump into adult fiction is no less bold. The Influencers is not quite a mystery, not quite a thriller—it’s a slow, layered family drama built around the hollow glamour of internet fame and the damage it leaves behind.
At the center is May Iverson, the once-sympathetic “Mother May I” of mommy blogging fame, who turned her five daughters into her brand. With names like January, March, April, June, and July (yes, really), the girls grew up in front of a camera, every milestone turned into content, every emotion filtered for engagement. Now adults, they’ve fractured: some still in the spotlight, some desperate for privacy, all carrying the weight of a childhood they never owned.
Then comes the murder. May’s second husband, August, is found dead in their mansion, which is then burned to the ground. The sisters—each with a complex relationship to their mother and stepfather—become suspects. But the book isn’t focused on solving the crime. It’s about exposing the cracks in a family that’s been built more on branding than trust.
The narrative jumps between each daughter’s point of view, as well as May’s and a chillingly accurate collective voice of the online “audience” watching the Iversons like it’s a true crime docuseries. These audience chapters are especially brilliant—highlighting the performative nature of internet sleuthing, the cruelty of parasocial fandoms, and the way people feel entitled to weigh in on someone else’s pain when it’s packaged just right.
McLemore’s writing shines most when showing the quieter horrors: the subtle abuses of exposure, the resentment of siblings forced to play characters, the disconnect between what’s real and what’s seen online. There’s strong commentary here on child influencers, privacy, commodification of identity, and what happens when your mother sees you more as a product than a person.
What holds the book back a bit is its pacing. The beginning drags before the characters fully come into focus, and some of the voices (especially among the sisters) aren’t as distinct as they could be. June and July, the influencer twins, blur together at times, and I found myself occasionally flipping back to remind myself who was speaking. That said, the emotional throughlines are consistent and affecting.
The best moments come from the contradictions—how the sisters both resent and need each other, how May genuinely believes she was a good mother even as her actions tell a different story, how followers online construct narratives with total confidence despite having only half the truth.
This book might frustrate readers expecting a sharp, twisty mystery, but if you’re here for the human drama, the slow unraveling of image versus identity, and a damning portrait of influencer culture’s fallout, The Influencers is a standout. It’s not a perfect book, but it’s a timely, thoughtful, and emotionally charged one that lingers after the final page
