When the self becomes a brand and life becomes a performance, what's left of the person behind the screen? These novels pierce through the glossy veneer of curated feeds and sponsored content to explore our digital age's most pressing questions. They expose the psychological cost of living for likes, the commodification of intimacy, and the disorienting collapse between public persona and private truth, revealing the dark side of monetizing your own authenticity.
These novels are sharp, literary critiques of what it means to exist online. They explore the fractured consciousness of the chronically online, the performance of selfhood in a world of curated personas, and the jarring collision between the weightless scroll and the weight of real life.
After discovering her boyfriend is a secret online conspiracy theorist, a skeptical woman flees to Berlin and embraces the very thing she scorns: crafting her own fake online identities. Oyler’s debut is a sharp, witty critique of the performance of selfhood in the digital age, exploring how easily the line between authentic and artificial selves becomes irrevocably blurred.
A woman famous for her viral posts finds her entire consciousness shaped by the absurd flow of "the portal" until a real-world family tragedy forces her to confront the stark difference between digital detachment and profound human connection. Lockwood masterfully captures the fractured, surreal experience of being Extremely Online.
While centered on a young Black woman wrongly accused of kidnapping the white child she babysits, the novel’s engine is her employer, Alix, an influencer who sees every person and crisis as potential content. Reid brilliantly dissects the influencer mindset, showing how an obsession with crafting a "woke" personal brand becomes a tool of transactional, damaging performativity.
Welcome to the world of momfluencers, girlbosses, and wellness gurus. These novels pull back the curtain on the commercialization of the aspirational life, where motherhood, self-care, and personal growth are packaged and sold. With sharp humor and keen insight, they expose the fierce competition and carefully guarded secrets behind the flawless Instagram grid.
A down-on-her-luck musician is hired by a wealthy mothers' playgroup and pulled into the orbit of a "momfluencer" who documents her seemingly perfect life for a legion of followers. Behind the sponsored posts, however, lies a world of fierce competition, anxiety, and secrets. A humorous and perceptive look at the commercialization of motherhood.
Daphne Berg has built a successful career as a plus-size influencer, turning self-love into a powerful online brand. But when her estranged, wealthy childhood friend asks her to be a bridesmaid, Daphne’s curated confidence is tested. This novel explores the difficult work of reconciling a polished online persona with messy, real-world insecurities.
This biting satire plunges into the world of wellness influencing and female-led startups, where co-founders promote a brand of performative self-care and commodified feminism. When a crisis hits, their carefully constructed empire of empowerment-as-marketing begins to crumble, sharply critiquing how social justice language is co-opted for commercial gain.
Shelley Stone is a Silicon Valley CEO and proto-influencer whose brand is her own hyper-optimized life. When she suffers a "glitch"—a moment of memory loss suggesting a past she can't recall—her perfectly curated existence threatens to unravel. The novel is a sharp satire of the "girlboss" mythos and the relentless performance required to maintain a flawless public life.
In these gripping psychological thrillers, the curated perfection of an influencer’s life becomes the stage for something sinister. They explore the dark side of parasocial relationships, the vulnerability of a life lived online, and the terrifying consequences when an anonymous follower decides to break the fourth wall.
This speculative novel alternates between 2015, where two friends scheme for internet fame, and 2051, where a "legacy influencer" lives a Truman Show-esque existence, her entire life contractually broadcast to a global audience. *Followers* is a suspenseful and chilling look at the endgame of influencer culture, privacy, and the cost of monetizing one’s life.
A wildly successful “instamum” whose career depends on her curated honesty finds herself stalked by a follower who knows a dark secret from her past. This gripping thriller exposes the dangers of parasocial relationships and the terrifying vulnerability that comes with building a brand on your family’s life.
A fashion editor determined to become a style influencer discovers the quickest way to climb the ranks: murder. This darkly comedic thriller blends *The Devil Wears Prada* with *American Psycho*, satirizing a cutthroat world where social media status is everything and one’s personal brand is worth killing for.
These novels examine influence on a massive scale, from the shock of accidental global fame to the meticulous construction of a celebrity persona. They explore the dizzying highs and crushing lows of capturing the world's attention and the immense pressure placed on those who become symbols for something far larger than themselves.
April May becomes an overnight global celebrity after her video of a mysterious giant robot goes viral. She is immediately thrust into a media storm, forced to navigate the highs of fame and the weight of being a spokesperson for humanity. Green’s novel is a compelling exploration of accidental influence and the pressure placed on those who capture the internet’s attention.
A superstar actress and a dashing heir have maintained a convincing public romance for years. In reality, it’s a meticulously planned PR stunt to control their narratives. The novel provides a fascinating look at influence on a celebrity scale, examining the emotional toll of curating a flawless, fake relationship for a global audience that demands authenticity.
In the influencer novel, the self is the ultimate product, and the currency is attention. These stories hold up a mirror to our own digitally mediated lives, asking uncomfortable questions about the authenticity we perform and the validation we crave. They are a vital, emerging genre for our time, capturing the surreal, often dangerous, reality of a world where everyone is a brand, and life is lived for the likes.