Bad Influence by Will Carver #BadInfluence @will_carver @orendabooks #phrogging #bookreview @randomthingstours #influencers

 

Two bored teenagers. 

One stupid game.

The wrong place to play…

Alyssa wants to be seen. Less wants to be someone. She takes two buses to class, posts pictures of her lunch, and pretends it’s all effortless. He hides his privilege beneath thrifted clothes and a sketchbook full of impossible designs. Together, they are inseparable – two outsiders constructing a version of themselves the world might finally applaud.

Then Alyssa stumbles upon the hidden world of phrogging – living unnoticed inside other people’s homes. She and Less slip through Los Angeles’ glossy veneer: influencers, producers, pop stars, all so busy performing their perfect lives they don’t notice the shadows in their attics, the scratching in their walls.

An act of rebellion. A harmless thrill. A social experiment.

Until they choose the wrong house.

Until the influencer they idolise catches them in the act.

Until the cameras, already rolling, capture everything.

What begins as a reckless adventure becomes a nightmare of lies, power … and murder…

Bad Influence by Will Carver was published on 18 June by Orenda Books. My thanks to the publisher who sent my copy for review as part of this virtual book tour. 

I have to add my congratulations to Will Carver, who, since I initially wrote this review, won the Capital Crime Fingerprint Award for Genre-Busting Book of the Year for his novel Kill Them With Kindness. This is so well deserved and long awaited. If anyone writes genre-busting stories, it is Carver and he does them so very well. 

I always get really excited about a new book from Will Carver, but I ALWAYS struggle to write a review. He is so clever, so very different, so unexpected, continually surprising, it is really difficult to find the words! Oh, and it's a crime novel with a PINK COVER!! 

So here goes!   Just when I think I've worked out where his imagination might take him next, he delivers something entirely unexpected. Bad Influence is bold, provocative, darkly funny and utterly compelling from the very first page.

The premise immediately grabs attention. Two teenagers discover the world of phrogging and begin secretly living in the homes of social media influencers, slipping unnoticed through the cracks of carefully curated online lives. It is a fascinating concept and one that the author explores so well, with such creativity. 

Alyssa and Less are such brilliantly drawn characters. They are both desperate to be noticed, desperate to mean something, and their friendship really is the heart of this story. It is not really easy to like either of them, but they are both so compelling to learn about. Will Carver has an extraordinary ability to create characters who are so real and flawed and entirely believable, even when their actions push far beyond what most of us would ever consider doing! 

The authors intense examination of  influencer culture, social media obsession and society's endless craving for validation is just spot on. He is incisive, often uncomfortable, and frequently laugh-out-loud funny. There is an awesome sense of satire running throughout the novel, but beneath the humour lies something much darker and far more thought-provoking.

The structure works brilliantly. Multiple voices, social media snippets, hashtags and online commentary combine to create a world this is both exaggerated and frighteningly familiar. It is clever and completely addictive.

Will Carver's distinctive voice shines through every page, drawing the reader deeper into a story that becomes increasingly unsettling as it unfolds. There were numerous moments when I found myself shaking my head in disbelief, yet unable to stop reading.

Bad Influence is daring, original and wonderfully entertaining. It is a novel that captures the absurdity of modern celebrity culture, yet is also a gripping  story. Will Carver continues to push boundaries in ways few writers can, and the result is a book that is impossible to ignore.

Dark, witty, inventive and thought-provoking, Bad Influence is another outstanding novel from an author who never takes the easy route. I loved every page.

Will Carver is the international bestselling author of the January David series and the critically acclaimed, mind-blowingly original Detective Pace series, which includes Good Samaritans (2018), Nothing Important Happened Today (2019) and Hinton Hollow Death Trip (2020), all of which were ebook bestsellers and selected as books of the year in the mainstream international press.

Nothing Important Happened Today was longlisted for both the Goldsboro Books Glass Bell Award 2020 and the Theakston’s Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year Award. Hinton Hollow Death Trip was longlisted for the Guardian’s Not the Booker Prize, and was followed by the literary thrillers, The Beresford, Psychopaths Anonymous, The Daves Next Door, Suicide Thursday and Upstairs at the Beresford, and his highly regarded speculative thriller debut, Kill Them with Kindness. 

Will spent his early years in Germany, but returned to the UK at age eleven, when his sporting career took off. He and his partner run their own fitness and nutrition company, and live in Reading with five children and a tortoise.