Influential

Product Information

There are some really complex characters - from Almond, to Heather, a straight-talking, golden hearted plus size girl who refuses to fit into the mold, to Imogen, another influencer with a perky Barbie-like exterior who is crumbling beneath the pressure of a mother she is never good enough for, to Joss - the caring, gentle, funny love interest we all dream of finding in our own lives. I didn't anticipate that I would feel so emotional as to be almost brought to tears reading this book, but here we are! The author’s writing style was so easy to engage with too, and even though this is a YA, the main characters are 17/18, and the writing style reflects their ages well, and the author doesn’t shy away from their emerging sexual and emotional feelings. This was a breath of fresh air in the genre and, with this being what I understand is the author's debut novel, I really am excited to see more from her.

Amara Sage graduated from the Bath Spa MA for Writing for Young People with a distinction and lives in Bristol with her husband and two dogs.

On the one hand, they are fun and make our lives easier, but on the other hand, they have made our world 100% more superficial. Almond is forced into the spotlight when she was just a perfectly filtered bump: her mum has been documenting their family through social media since before she was born. This book also touches on mental health, self harm, internet drama, racism, blackmail, and deep fakes.

Her love-hate relationship with her mother is especially compelling, and I thought Eve was a wonderful character despite her flaws. I didn’t expect to completely fall in love with a story about the ins and outs of social media, but here I am, neck-deep into not only the mere photos people post on the internet, but also the devastating impact it can have on others—and that’s exactly what Almond Brown’s story reveals. His hate messages are threatening, and he threatens Almond with even more… Amara Sage‘s debut title is raw and unflinching.A bittersweet Northern Irish romance that takes a new look at teen pregnancy, the magic and mess of first relationships, and a young woman's right to choose her own future.

To calculate the overall star rating and percentage breakdown by star, we don’t use a simple average. There was just so much dread filling up in me as I was reading this book -- the recognition that children are going online at too young and age, knowing digital native parents who post everything online and that layer of the dark web that we all know about but treat as a distant threat. The author doesn’t shy away from the lows of depression and highlights the significance of therapy while acknowledging the ongoing struggles that come with it. All this under the unforgiving spotlight of millions of netizens watching her every move and every post.Thank you, NetGalley and the publisher for providing me with a free eArc in exchange for an honest review! With snappy pacing and an intriguing plot, the book can be devoured within a few hours, leaving a lasting impression.

I’m being very nit-picky here – overall this was a really good book and an extremely impressive debut novel.Influential is a hard, real look at the online phenomenon of influencers, and the effect their perfect, filtered lives have on the youngest of them. Previously envied, Almond's world is turned upside down by her gradual awakening to the false narrative she is being compelled to pedal, it's relationship to her worsening mental health and the final straw when her reputation is unfairly impacted by fake news. I also think it’s ridiculously important to have these storylines and to bring these issues into young adult fiction because with the rise of social media and a lot of unsupervised internet access, these things can happen and for a young person it can be really daunting. These cookies help provide information on metrics the number of visitors, bounce rate, traffic source, etc. And diving into Almond’s personal life, that even though everything looks perfect through a screen, you can have so much more going on than people realise.