"Such a Bad Influence"

Such a Bad Influence by Olivia Muenter

Pages: 336 Genre: thriller/mystery

Rating: 2.5 Star

Hazel Davis is trying her best, but her life is a bit of a mess. And on top of everything, she always has to be aware of her sister, Evie/Evelyn Davis/@evelyn, a teen lifestyle influencer. Hazel considers herself lucky enough to have avoided the family business, but their mother has been propping up Evie since she was born. But now Evie's gone missing, and no one sees anything about her — not her manager mom, influencer frenemies, her prankster boyfriend, or Hazel. And no one seems as concerned as Hazel is. Theories about Evie's disappearance are running wild, and Hazel must throw herself into her sister's life to find her. But she might be forced to learn some things that even Hazel wasn't prepared for.

In the interest of transparency, I think I should be upfront about the fact that I listened to this while I was playing the Sims, which ended up being incredibly eventful. In other words, I may not have always been giving the book my full attention. That being said, while I clearly enjoyed the book enough to finish it, I still think the main story was lacking.

For all its flaws, it was actually pretty intriguing up until the ending (really, the reveal of what happened to Evie). I was into it, and I really wanted to find her. I also thought the characters were written well enough: people were surprisingly complex with motivations that weren't just "popularity," which would've been low-hanging fruit for a book about social media. Ironically, I thought Hazel was the weakest character, but even she managed to hold her own throughout.

Unfortunately, I think this book commits one of the biggest sins that a mystery book can do: lying to the reader. Now, I understand what it means for a character in a book to hold back information from the reader. Maybe it's a secret they plan to reveal at a key moment to keep interest up, or maybe it's just to keep the plot moving and not lay out every single detail. Both of those examples are fine. Good writing, even. But there's a difference between that and hinging your entire mystery on a detail that we only don't know because you are withholding it.

If you're going to frame your entire book as a mystery ("where did Evie Davis go?"), then I need to have a fair shot at solving it. Otherwise it's not a mystery, you're just lying. In this case, there is a final reveal that is meant to completely recontextualize the book, but what's the point of that? Had I known this secret, I would've been a lot less interested in the journey; the author probably knew this, which is why it was a final reveal instead. But that just makes the ending feel cheap and unearned.

Overall, the whole conclusion was underwhelming. This "big reveal" makes the book's ending very ambiguous and unclear. Now, I love an ending that makes you think, but the rest of the book is so concrete that the ending just feels incomplete. If it was intentional, I'm just not sure it was executed as well as it could've been. On the other hand you have the mystery's ending (what happened to Evie), which was also boring.

There also wasn't enough plot. Too much of the narrative was social commentary or "flashbacks" (not always literally, but rehashing things that happened in the past) that were primarily to back up the commentary. The author clearly had some thoughts on social media that she wanted to share, and the story seemed to come second. This is a shame, because the story was interesting and clever but the commentary was obvious and all ideas that have been explored before.

All in all, the book was fine. I didn't hate listening to it, but it also wasn't the best book I've ever read. If you want to read a book that talks about a lot of the downsides to social media, this would probably be a good book for you. But if you're looking a thriller/mystery, maybe keep looking.