Book: Thanks For Watching (Under The Influence) by Kate Cavanaugh
Reviewed by Quinn with Hobbies
Rating: 4/5
I was so excited to get my hands on Thanks For Watching that I asked my library to order a copy and waited for it to be available to borrow! Kate Cavanaugh is an avid library reader, and I wanted to honor that while also giving others in my area the chance to read it too!
I am biased, as she is one of the Youtubers I've watched for years, and half the reason I picked up this book. To support someone I admire and encourages her community to read, write, and be as creative as our hearts desire. That being said, I really enjoyed Thanks For Watching! Kate is quirky and I love that it shines through in her characters in their own ways. To me, I would say this is murder mystery is satirical in how it portrays the influencers of this casts and the obsessive need to be filming all the time. Which is a real thing, of course, but this book dials it up to an 11!
The cast is large, but each has a distinct voice and the pacing is fast! Each character is a different face of influencer life—beauty, fitness, bookish, secret gossip, religion, cooking... you name it. And I love them because what we're shown in their PoVs is just how bad they are. Behind the curtain, so to speak. The worst of the worst and they're all put on an island with one death after another, and for a moment, they really do just turn into camera animals. It's a fun ride and while I loved the characters, I wasn't exactly horrified at any of their deaths (which hm, isn't that another thing to think about, how they act like they do because they know people will eat it up and really am I, the reader, any better than them when it comes to entertainment?) My two favorite characters ended up being Sanjeev and Olivia. Sanjeev has my whole heart and god I wished better for him in this book.
I have a lot of feelings about the ending of this one! Part of the fun of mysteries is finding the clues, and while, after the ending I knew it was, I didn't feel like I was playing sleuth alongside the characters. That may be because the characters weren't interested in the clues, either, but as a reader I felt that the plot was a little too subtle on it and would have greatly enjoyed more hints or red-herrings. The big reveal felt very rushed. The plot twist was good, but happened much too fast. Like, a lot was summarized and I wished there had been more to it! However, the suggestion of a second book with what we were given in the epilogue has my interest peeked so I'm looking forward to it!