Such a Bad Influence

A A “A fascinating exploration of the dangers of social media . . . smart and timely.”--Carola Lovering, author of For fans of Ashley Winstead, Jessica Knoll, and Jo Piazza, an electric debut thriller about what happens when one of the first child stars of the social media age grows up . . . and goes missing. Hazel Davis is drifting: she’s stalled in her career, living in a city she hates, and less successful than her younger sister, @evelyn, a mega-popular lifestyle influencer. Evie came of age online, having gone viral at five years old for a heart-tugging daddy-daughter dance. Ten years older and spotlight-averse, Hazel managed to dodge the family YouTube channel--so although she can barely afford her apartment, at least she made her own way. Evie is eighteen now, with a multimillion-dollar career and unlimited opportunities, but Hazel is still protective of her little sister and skeptical of the way everyone seems to want a piece of her: Evie’s followers, her YouTuber boyfriend and influencer frenemies, and their opportunistic mother. So when Evie disappears one day--during an unsettling live stream that cuts out midsentence--Hazel is horrified to have her worst instincts proven right. As theories about Evie’s disappearance tear through the internet, inspiring hashtags, Reddit threads, podcast episodes, and scorn, Hazel throws herself into the darkest parts of her sister’s world to untangle the threads of truth. After all, Hazel knows Evie better than anyone else . . . doesn’t she?

Auteur

Olivia Muenter

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*A *USA Today Best Seller
A Good Morning America Sizzling Summer Reads Roundup Pick

“A fascinating exploration of the dangers of social media . . . smart and timely.”—Carola Lovering, author of Tell Me Lies and Bye, Baby

For fans of Ashley Winstead, Jessica Knoll, and Jo Piazza, an electric debut thriller about what happens when one of the first child stars of the social media age grows up . . . and goes missing.

Hazel Davis is drifting: she’s stalled in her career, living in a city she hates, and less successful than her younger sister, @evelyn, a mega-popular lifestyle influencer. Evie came of age online, having gone viral at five years old for a heart-tugging daddy-daughter dance. Ten years older and spotlight-averse, Hazel managed to dodge the family YouTube channel—so although she can barely afford her apartment, at least she made her own way.

Evie is eighteen now, with a multimillion-dollar career and unlimited opportunities, but Hazel is still protective of her little sister and skeptical of the way everyone seems to want a piece of her: Evie’s followers, her YouTuber boyfriend and influencer frenemies, and their opportunistic mother. So when Evie disappears one day—during an unsettling live stream that cuts out midsentence—Hazel is horrified to have her worst instincts proven right.

As theories about Evie’s disappearance tear through the internet, inspiring hashtags, Reddit threads, podcast episodes, and scorn, Hazel throws herself into the darkest parts of her sister’s world to untangle the threads of truth. After all, Hazel knows Evie better than anyone else . . . doesn’t she?

Échantillon de lecture
Evelyn Davis has argued with every person she’s never met.
     In her mind, she has gone to battle with each stranger who has posted a negative comment on an Instagram post, every person who has somehow found her personal email address. The ones who have found her physical address, too. She has stood in front of them and laid it all out. She’s made every point, every argument. She’s memorized each counterpoint. Every caveat. She has looked into their eyes and convinced them that she gets it. She’s willed into them the same belief that she’s had to convince herself of for years: that she’s as human as they are, soft and vulnerable in the very same spots.
     Today, Evie drives and plays the game again, imagining all the usernames she sees on her phone as real people, giving them that benefit, even though they never gave it back to her. She turns up the volume and pictures the person who sent a handwritten letter to her house last week. The woman who had asked why she wasn’t a better role model for people her age. Why she’s not more grateful for her four million followers, for her success, her face, her body. “Don’t you understand the power you have?” the stranger had written in neat, curving letters. “Don’t you get it?”
     The stranger’s name was Susan, and it turned out that she, like Evie herself, was all over the internet. Single and in her late fifties, Susan lived outside of Columbus, Ohio, with a black lab named Muppet. Her passions, based on her digital footprint, included giving local restaurants highly detailed, lukewarm-to-scathing reviews and spoiling her two redheaded grandchildren whom she frequently referred to as “my life” or “my joy” or “my everything.” Muppet, it seemed, didn’t quite make the cut. Susan frequented Twitter less often, which made it easy enough for Evie to see her thoughts from any given time in the last ten years. It only took a few seconds of browsing, for example, for her to find a post from 2018 in which Susan wrote that she felt “truly devastated” when Matt Lauer lost his job on The Today Show. Her Instagram bio featured ten emojis and a Bible verse. And, of course, she had a lesson to teach Evie.
     Evie imagines how they’d sit down together for coffee. “It’s all a huge privilege, Susan,” she’d say, ticking the box she knows Susan is so clearly waiting for her to skate right by. “An unbelievable, immense privilege. It really is.”
     Susan would cross her arms and lift her chin. A challenge.
     “And?” she’d probably ask, pursing her lips. The unspoken second question suspended between them: “What do you plan to do with that, exactly?”
     Evie smiles in real life, imagining the careful expression she’d strike in response to the question, knowing that whatever answer she gave next wouldn’t really matter. Maybe she’d explain that she actively avoids promoting all the things that people her age are taught to avoid—drugs, alcohol, diet pills, bullying. She would reference the half dozen videos where she’s made a point to mention that these things just aren’t for her, that they’ve never been her thing. That they aren’t cool. Maybe she would be honest and level with Susan. Tell the truth, that her vices have always been things that are  entirely unique to her. That the things she can’t quit are much more humiliating.
     Even before people like Susan went out of their way to tell Evie what they thought of her, Evie has been addicted to seeking out the worst things people would say about her, to carefully cataloging the ways she is hated.
     In the beginning, her mom half-heartedly tried to hide the snark sites from her, to block the Reddit forums that discussed influencers, to make sure Evie didn’t learn about the darker, more hateful online message boards and chat rooms, too. To filter the worst comments. By the time Evie was eleven, though, she could find her way around most website child protection programs. A few years after that, Evie had nearly half a million followers, and the whole thing was too big to control, anyway. Her mom couldn’t have hidden her from most of it if she’d tried. Besides, she had seen her mom browsing these same sites herself.…