Everyone wants to be a influencer but you can still have your own opinions and feelings. How far would you take it?

I was immediately interested in this book after reading a brief synopsis. The Perfect Ones by Nicole Hackett is a story that revolves around a missing Instagram influencer named Alabama. Within a couple of days of arriving in Iceland for a press trip, this girl is nowhere to be found. Who knows what happened? Is it her best friend or another person from the trip? And why?

Synopsis:

Two days after arriving in Iceland for a promotional trip, Instagram influencer Alabama Wood goes missing. With no leads, the Icelandic police start their investigation by focusing on the two influencers seemingly closest to Alabama on the trip: Celeste Reed, Alabama’s best friend of ten years, and Hollie Goodwin, fitness guru and Alabama’s unwilling idol.

Celeste and Alabama have grown apart recently because Celeste has been too distracted by her five-year-old’s behavioral issues and her husband’s refusal to admit that there’s a problem. What Celeste doesn’t tell them is how she has been coping with these worries and how it involves Alabama in ways no one would guess.

On the outside, Hollie appears to have everything—the husband, the body, and over one million Instagram followers. In reality, however, Hollie came to Iceland to escape the implosion of her life behind the screen. The only person who suspected something amiss behind Hollie’s precisely filtered pictures is Alabama.

This is told from multiple points of view, it’s an entertaining read with a good twist at the end. This is out now!

Unfortunately, this book fell flat for me. I found it hard to connect to the characters and really didnt care what happened. Loved the setting though.

Loved this book!!! If you like a good story filled with Influencers showing you who they really are underneath the facade of the internet then this one might be for you. The main characters were so well done and I could not put this book down.

I am in a confusion with this book. Although I read it in one day, I still was unsatisfied with what I've got.
The thing is that non of the characters were likable or at least tolerable. The constant whining and jeolusy made me cringe sometimes. The constant jumping between timelines made it even harder to conect with the story (one chapter was from one character from ''3 months before'', the next one was from another character ''3 days after'', the next one from ''2 days before'' and so on). Nothing much happened through out the book, but because I'm a little bit nosy, I was intrigued enough to know dirty secrets of each character so I continued with this book.
The ending was the wors, in my opinion. The plot twist was questionable and unrealistic, to say the least.
I think it's decent enough thriller for those who wants to try reading books in this genre, but for those who are well sesoned thriller readers this one might be a flop.

I am so disappointed with this book. It is not a thriller, it is not a mystery, I don't know what it is!

I read through it hoping and hoping something would happen, but nothing did.

Ending, what ending? There is no ending.

What was this all for (as Creed would say)... I feel cheated out of my time.

All the characters (except one) were so indistinguishable, so same-y... the setup, the location, they had such potential, but, still - nothing. At all.

Thank you for the ARC, NetGalley!

This thriller centered around a group of social media influencers took me a bit to get into because it was hard to keep the characters straight. They all seemed to have similar backgrounds and didn't have distinct voices so I found myself going back a few times to make sure I understood who the author was talking about. Once I finally got the characters down, I found this to be pretty fast moving but still not easy to tell what was going on because the timeline jumped around so frequently. I normally like dual timelines but this one was a bit too chaotic for me to keep track of. I needed a bit of a refresher every time something was referenced from a previous chapter. Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for this ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Social media influencers on a vacation to Iceland sounded like an interesting set-up and it was, to an extent. My problem was that I couldn’t connect with any of the characters so when one of them disappears, I wasn’t too upset. The story itself was interesting and I loved the descriptions of Iceland, on my bucket list of places to travel, but it was difficult to feel the typical tension I feel when reading thrillers because of the way this unfolded. The ending had a nice twist but it was too little, too late for me. A good read but not so much a thriller.

Thank you Netgalley, Dreamscape media and Nicole Hackett for the audiobook ARC of this book.

This one had me sucked in by the synopsis alone. The premise of a blogger going missing in Iceland and two others being suspects was just brilliant.

The author did an amazing job at building each character completely and really exploring their lives. Just about all characters were unlikeable however I found that great because I suspected everyone of something

The narrators were incredible in this book and I enjoyed listening to them

The pace was on the slower side for me and but do love a slow burn. I did find the background details of our main protagonists made it a little slower than I would have liked however overall this was a good read/listen!

3.5/5

Thank you NetGalley and Crooked Lane Books for the eARC in exchange for my honest review!

Let me talk about how gorgeous this cover is! I absolutely love the colors and design. I was immediately drawn to this cover and knew I had to read this book!!

I was really impressed that The Perfect Ones was Nicole Hackett's debut thriller. Her writing, the characters, the twists were all addictive! I read a few pages any chance I got...when I first woke up in the morning, in the school pickup line, while my kids were playing, and dove deep into the story after my kids were asleep. It was that GOOD!

The characters were very well developed and Alabama Wood wasn't as bad as I thought she was going to be. She was kind of like the Grinch. There was a small heart under that tough exterior of hers. Celeste I connected with the most since she's mother of a young child, and I really enjoyed how Hollie was from Dallas, TX. I lived outside of Dallas for three years and loved the Dallas references throughout the book.

I'm also a sucker for dual POV, so I loved how I was able to get each characters perspective. The twists toward the end were exciting and I didn't predict the ending AT ALL!!

I'm really looking forward to reading more from Nicole! Since she's a local Maryland author, I'd love to see a Maryland or DMV setting in her next book!!

This is going to be a tough sell for lots of readers since this is more a character study than a thriller, all about the inner thoughts, feelings and desires of the most vapid, self-centered, uninteresting women I've ever read. I can root for vapid and self-centered if they are interesting and I did not find these women so. This novel spent too much time belaboring innocuous minutia of these women's lives instead of revolving around the most interesting part--what happened in Iceland to Alabama. This book spends 75% or more of its space in the women's lives before and after Iceland, where it should've been flip-flopped. I found this to have no tension and to be quite boring.

Of the characters the story followed, Hollie was my favourite. She was the most relatable to me, the one I was able to connect with most. Getting to read some of the story from Alabama's POV gave the plot more depth. It was interesting to read about some of the negative impacts of social media on people and influencers.

For a story that bills itself as one that is based on social media influencers, I felt like it lacked in that area. The author touched on it throughout the story, but I felt like the plot was based more on the issues in the characters lives, rather than how being an influencer affected them. So in that sense, I was slightly disappointed. I also felt like the ending was somewhat predictable.

I will say though that Hollie, Celeste and Alabama took root inside my head from the moment I started reading and I found it hard to put the book down. I was very much invested in the story, however predictable I found it.

A book that follows the perspective of several social media influencers (this is becoming a common theme!) and the mystery of what happened to Alabama Woods. We journey through each influencer's thoughts, as we learn more and more about everyone’s history, and their potential connections with Alabama, and of course who is hiding what.

The novel starts slow with a lot of details, but then about half way through it begins to pick up the pace.

Honestly I’m still not sure I know fully what I read… so there’s that.

If you enjoy thrillers themed with social media influencers, multiple POVS, Iceland as a setting, you may enjoy this one! The audiobook helped the novel move much quicker, and I liked being able to go between the audio and digital book.

A bunch of Instagram influencers are invited on a trip to Iceland to promote a clothing line. You have multiple POV's that got a little confusing for me in the beginning. It was an interesting look at behind the scenes of Instagram Influencers, and how not everything is as great as it appears. True to life, I'm sure!

It just didn't totally grab me, but the ending had a good twist!

Thank you Netgalley and Crooked Lane Books for the ARC!

In The Perfect Ones, a group of social media influencers are invited on a trip to Iceland to promote a clothing line. The women are enjoying this unique travel destination and trying to make the most of the opportunity to increase their following, when one of them disappears.

The Icelandic setting is what first caught my attention about this book and that part of the book was really good. I loved the descriptions of the scenery and some of the traditional foods of the area. The story itself includes a few different timelines and is told from the point-of-view of three of the influences on the trip:  Hollie, Celeste, and Alabama. They are all flawed characters and the book goes into a lot of depth about their lives before and after the trip. 

I was engaged in the story, but I was expecting the book to be more of a mystery focusing on the disappearance in Iceland. Instead, the book was in part a domestic drama going into details about the women's relationships with their significant others as well as one character dealing with a possible reason her young daughter is having problems at school. The book is also a commentary on the pressures social media puts on people to appear as if their lives are perfect and how that can affect mental health. The book is good, but was much different than I thought it would be. The ending has a bit of a twist that some people will really enjoy. I liked and was able to predict part of it, but part of it wasn't as clear-cut as I would have prefered. 

I received an advance copy of this ebook at no cost from NetGalley and Crooked Lane. My review is voluntary and unbiased.

Sometimes the timing on books is weird! I went into this completely blind and found it was set in Iceland, where I just returned from a couple days ago! Definitely some good descriptions in the book fitting a short trip which resonated extra being so close to my travels. Had to pull in one of my pictures for the background that’s directly a setting in the book!

The Perfect Ones is a thriller filled with Instagram influencers on a paid trip to Iceland. When one of them goes missing, secrets and hidden parts of their lives come to the surface.

This was fast paced, had an engaging writing style, and featured intriguing plot lines. Unfortunately it suffered from a lack of focus. It wasn’t clear what each influencer’s “it factor” was which made it hard to connect to the idea that the characters were so successful and made any falls from Grace feel contrived. I also felt the reveals took too long while we were unnecessarily bogged down in ancillary plot lines. Each storyline might have made a great book on its own but they ultimately didn’t cohere like I hoped. I would have been more interested in the Alabama storyline at the forefront.

The ending didn’t feel super believable to me given the character development and jumped a little far in the future. Overall not a favorite but I wouldn’t talk anyone out of picking it up due to solid scenery, background, and side stories!

Trigger warnings surrounding pregnancy that to clarify would constitute a spoiler!

Alabama Woods is an Instagram or stuck at 40,000 followers and she just knows this trip to Iceland sponsored by Pink Purse Will be the boost she needs to get to 1 million followers Holly is a runner and an Instagram or who has 1 million followers but she initially has no desire to go on this trip to Iceland it doesn’t until her seemingly perfect marriage in the life she is so carefully cultivated starts to implode. Alabama and Selest are good friends and so they travel together celeste was also reluctant to go on the trip and she was worried about her daughter Bella who is having behaviour problems that she believes is because her daughter is autistic and although her husband Louis wants to blow it off as kids being kids Celeste knows there is much more to her little girl than just being a bad girl. They have other people who are going to be at the Iceland location that also have big problems but they must all be pushed aside when Alabama goes missing the night before Alabama goes missing however it seems she is stuck like glue to Holly and notices things that Holly‘s closest friends didn’t notice but once she goes missing that is neither here nor there or is it? There is so much to this book that there’s no way I could give a brief summary there’s so many secrets so many OMG moments and let me just say Nicole Hackett has dotted all her I’s and crossed all her T’s. At no time will you shake your head and think there’s no way that can happen, this book is so greatly cultivated and executed that you will not want to put it down it is so good a total solid five star rating and it makes you wonder who’s the real them the one online or the one in real life? The perfect ones by Nicole Hackett is the reason people read books I think I have found a new favorite thriller author because it all her books or like this signed me up. I received this book from NetGalley and crooked Lane books but I am leaving this review voluntarily please forgive any mistakes as I am blind and dictate my review.

The bones were good for this one but something didn’t hit for me. I couldn’t really connect with the characters - the multiple POVs may have hindered this slightly. Alabama, you need to log off of insta, baby. Celeste was easily the most likable but, for the record, you are not going to get an autism spectrum diagnosis within a few weeks, especially if you’re using a school psychologist. Overall, a fast read that has a great setting!

Featuring ~ debut, multiple 3rd person POV, multiple timelines, 6 part story, social media influencers, infidelity, mental illness, miscarriage

Hollie, Celeste & Alabama are influencers off to Iceland for a week.

Usually I am big fan of multiple narrators and timelines, but in this case it was difficult to keep up with. Sometimes we were in the day of the accident, or the day after, or 3 months before, or a day before, or 6 weeks after....it might have been fine~ish, but how was I supposed to remember what a husband said 8 chapters ago to make the wife upset without a recap. But then I'd probably be complaining if I did get that recap because then it would have been repetitive. Also, since it was in the 3rd person each characters name was said in each chapter a gazillion times.

There's quite a bit of emphasis on their appearances and it's like they're in competition with each other ~ they have to look the best and have the most followers and likes. All characters are unlikable, jealously is high and one of them is making some crazy plans which really shows how unstable she is.

With all that said I liked this one well enough as a debut. The author made it seem like it'd be cool to visit Iceland. And it was helpful that each chapter told us who was talking, when it was and where we were.

Social media influencers Celeste, Hollie, and Alabama are all invited on a trip to Iceland along with a large group. After a picture perfect day hiking the glaciers, Alabama disappears. With few clues, the police start interrogating those closest to her, her best friend Celeste and Alabama's Instagram idol Hollie. But everything isn't picture perfect behind the scenes of each woman's life.
The story jumps between the recent past and then days after the disappearance as each woman's messy real life is revealed. Holly is struggling between her husband's desires and what she really wants in life, Celeste is recognized signs of disability in her young daughter, a fact that her husband continues to deny, and Alabama's mental health is at stake when social media popularity becomes an obsession. This book really made me consider how much social media has taken over my own life.
I voluntarily read and reviewed an advanced copy of this book. All thoughts and opinions are my own.