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Everyone wants to be them, but internet fame comes at a price…
Two days after arriving in Iceland for a promotional trip, Instagram influencer Alabama Wood goes missing. With no leads, the Icelandic police start their investigation by focusing on the two influencers seemingly closest to Alabama on the trip: Celeste Reed, Alabama’s best friend of ten years, and Hollie Goodwin, fitness guru and Alabama's unwilling idol.
Celeste and Alabama have grown apart recently because Celeste has been too distracted by her five-year-old’s behavioral issues and her husband’s refusal to admit that there’s a problem. What Celeste doesn’t tell them is how she has been coping with these worries and how it involves Alabama in ways no one would guess.
On the outside, Hollie appears to have everything—the husband, the body, and over one million Instagram followers. In reality, however, Hollie came to Iceland to escape the implosion of her life behind the screen. The only person who suspected something amiss behind Hollie’s precisely filtered pictures is Alabama.
As secrets are revealed and loyalties are tested, debut author Nicole Hackett asks: do we control our online image, or does it control us?
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Creators
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Publisher
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Release date
May 2, 2023 -
Formats
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Kindle Book
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OverDrive Read
- ISBN: 9781639102631
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EPUB ebook
- ISBN: 9781639102631
- File size: 752 KB
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Languages
- English
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Reviews
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March 1, 2023
Suspicion shadows a tour group when one of its members disappears. Hollie Goodwin wakes up to the disturbing news that Alabama Wood has gone missing from their trip to V�k, Iceland. Fellow members of their group gather to hear a police officer deliver the news and announce a pending investigation. The story flashes back to Hollie in Dallas three months before and to Celeste Reed and Alabama in Chicago as they prepare for the voyage. All three are well-known Instagram influencers. Hollie and Celeste manage complex family lives, while the self-involved Alabama visits Dr. Keith Swinkle, whom she despises, and flushes the antipsychotic pills he gives her down the toilet. On such tiny spoonfuls of information is Hackett's cleverly constructed thriller built. These telegraphic flashbacks are interspersed with scenes from the day before and the day after Alabama's disappearance. Beneath the mystery, and at times overshadowing it, are the messy lives of this trio back home. Hollie deals with an unexpected pregnancy, Celeste with a crumbling marriage and an extremely unruly child. Throughout, Hackett strategically plants seeds of doubt, teasing the reader with pieces of the puzzle. Other members of the tour group--Emily, Margot, Katherine--lurk in the background as possible suspects. Sometimes the perspective is blurred. Does the ending of one chapter--"How shocking. Unless, of course, you already knew"--represent the thoughts of the character whose name heads that chapter or those of the author? Readers may find it challenging to remain interested in these backstories when they fight for attention with a compelling whodunit. A twisty thriller with many detours and surprises.COPYRIGHT(2023) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
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