Synopsis:
Influencer is a thriller audiobook narrated by Isabla Merced and Christopher Briney.
Aaron Fortin is new in town. He drives a brand-new Acura—a gift from his parents for uprooting him in the middle of senior year. Showing up on his first day at the local public school in that nice of a car? He knows he’ll never blend in, and he doesn’t care to try. The car, the new kid mystique, he can use all that…
Crystal Giordano carpools to the same school in her friend Trevor’s beat-up van. In the van along with Crystal and Trevor are Paul, Harmony, and Gayle. Crystal’s technically part of their misfit group, but most of the time, she feels like she’s the only one who doesn’tfit.
When Aaron Fortin sits at their lunch table, Crystal can see he’s not who he says he is. But how big of a fraud is Aaron Fortin? Crystal clumsily exposes Aaron and becomes his target, falling victim to his insidious campaign to erase her. Only then does she discover who he truly is—and it’s so much worse than she thought.
As her friends begin to follow him one by one, Crystal wonders if she can protect them or if his influence is just too strong.
Please note: This Audible Original contains graphic violence and themes of drug addiction and sexual assault. Listener discretion is advised.
Review:
I don’t know if I would have enjoyed this as much if it wasn’t narrated by actors I like. All I’ll say is that Chris Briney needs to play a psychopathic serial killer in a show or film, that would be so good. He absolutely nailed the cold and unfeeling tone that Aaron ‘The Speaker’ Fortin would constantly talk about.
The opening chapter really set the scene for how horrifying and unsettling Influencer would be. Absolutely nothing was held back with the descriptions in this (including the killing of animals) so I’d really recommend you stay away from this book if you don’t like graphic violence. The book starts out with a pregnant teen and her family, including younger brother, being killed in extremely graphic ways. I don’t think you ever actually get a reason for this happening, Aaron is genuinely just a psychopath.
I liked Aaron’s character because he was so horrible. He was fairly complex (think JD from Heathers) and offered more narrative-wise than Crystal. Most of her chapters were spent listening to how sad her life is and how none of her friends actually like her. While I wanted to like her because I like Isabela Merced, Crystal just wasn’t likeable at all. Her chapters were spent finding out things about Aaron that you already knew because he told you about it ages ago. This really affected the pace for me and I felt like this book would have hit harder if it was just a little bit shorter.
Going back to Crystal’s friends. I didn’t like any of them. Maybe Trevor but that’s it. He was the only one that was honest and nice to her after Aaron showed up, even though Crystal (accidentally) outed him. The others were way too easily influenced by Aaron, even if Gayle’s situation was out of her hands to some extent.
I enjoyed the plot overall, even if some parts were pretty obvious. You never really knew what Aaron would do next though. I didn’t expect the storyline with Miss Hobbs (which may not be spelt this way but I listened to the audiobook so I don’t know) to go the way it did.
I’d recommend checking out Influencer if you have an Audible plus subscription. It’s a great listen if you can get it for free through the service–I don’t know if I’d spend actual money on it though.
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