Iconic is a new reality show where six D-listers have a month to become the most “iconic” person in the house and win a quarter of a million dollars. The contestants earn points by winning competitions and gaining positive public opinion, and the person with the most points wins. We have:

Araminta Yaxley-Carter, Influencer, London, UK
Isko Andrada, Chef, Vancouver, Canada
Rhys Sutton, Actor, New York, USA
Kalpana Mahajan, Activist, Perth, Australia
Jerome Frances, Entrepreneur, San Francisco, USA
Theo Newman, Frontman of RiotParade, Manchester, UK

These six all have their own reasons for being there, and they’re pretty typical for someone who is on a show like this. It’s set up like Big Brother, with cameras everywhere doing a 24/7 live stream, a confessional booth for everyone to vent about each other, and big personalities on a small island competing for television air time. It starts with the normal sexcapades and showmances, drinking games, getting to know each other, but three weeks in, one of them is dead and the other five are considered suspects.

My problem with this book isn’t the plot, the characters or the writing - I think this was a very creative story; it just had a very disjointed format. Some parts were almost like a screenplay of the night’s episode. Some episodes were written more as if they were happening in real time. Some parts were written normally from the present perspective, but then social media comments, confessional comments and the Interpol investigation would be thrown in odd places and the cohesiveness would be lost. I felt like it needed more continuity between the different aspects of the book, or a more defined layout.

That being said, this ended up being quite enjoyable! The characters are all very hateable (in an entertaining way) and I liked the reality show lean. I had decided on giving this 3.5 stars, and the way I would round it would be based on the ending … which turned out to be fantastic and worth the wait. 3.5, rounded up!

(Thank you to Sourcebooks Landmark, Bea Fitzgerald and NetGalley for the ARC in exchange for my review. This book is slated to be released on August 27, 2024.)

this one…wasn’t for me. the concept was very interesting, and i was excited to see how this group dynamic would play out. i think there is something so thrilling about insufferable people stuck in isolation.
unfortunately, a lot of this didn’t work for me. the pacing was slow, i felt like i wasn’t getting anywhere with the story. it felt like nothing was really happening? the tweets didn’t really lend anything to the narrative, and neither did the parts with interpol/the investigators. they didn’t gain any traction or provide anything we didn’t already get from the “episodes” so it felt fluffy.
i don’t think the characters were truly fleshed out either. i couldn’t get a read on any of them, nor did it feel like they were fully formed characters. their motivations, their personalities, it all fluctuated depending on the needs of where the story was meant to be going. i LOVE an unlikeable and/or insufferable characters, but there just wasn’t anything compelling me to care about their journey through this story. and the blurb calling the group best friend, girlfriend, rival, etc—girlfriend was obvious, but the others didn’t have strong enough relationships to rhys for me to believe that.
the formula of the show itself also didn’t make much sense to me. i didn’t quite understand who would greenlight this kind of show (let alone the hr nightmare it was). and like, you have to be so beyond self absorbed to consider being on it, and yeah, these characters were, but they didn’t have anything else going for them. what was the strategy, what were their greater goals? the points system and the purpose of the challenges just didn’t make sense to me. it actually felt like a sting operation disguised as a tv show, like these people weren’t really being broadcasted at all, it was fake.
i really did want to enjoy this, and i’m bummed it didn’t impress me. i think it tried really hard to be a lot of things, to throw the reader off, to be mysterious and misleading, but i just couldn’t keep up with the point of it.

I wasn’t a fan of this one. I thought the concept was really cool but the writing style wasn’t for me. I felt like the chapters were super long and should have been labeled better. At times I didn’t know who was saying what or what was really going on. I felt lost. I also didn’t really care for the characters and their personalities, I couldn’t really connect with any of them and this made me not really care about the book or how it ended.

Thank you NetGalley and Sourcebooks Landmark for my advanced readers copy. This is my honest and voluntary opinion.

I wanted to love this one, it’s such a cool concept but it didn’t work for me.

The book cuts between the show, social media posts and a police investigation without any sort of break which made for an awkward reading flow. The characters are all pretty unlikeable (which I believe is the point) but they weren’t even interesting.

The ending was also super anticlimactic.

(2.5 stars rounded up)

Thank you to Sourcebooks Landmark for this copy.

Super choppy writing - the episode, online comments, and the investigation should have titles within the episode. Sometimes I’m not sure who’s taking or what they’re doing. The characters were giving very small backgrounds but not a lot of defining characteristics and I had to remind myself who each character was as the story jumped around. I thought the premise of this was great and was really excited. At the begging I liked the confessional section and then what was happening real time - but as I read on, I wish it was formatted differently. Certain times I didn’t feel like the characters responses made sense for what was going on. A lot of additional fluff - I almost stopped reading this multiple times and honestly wish I did. It wasn’t worth it to finish. The book is about a reality show and throughout the book it’s constantly mentioned how it’s just a game, image and clout, but then made a lot of the characters have very deep thoughts - it felt contradicting. I was confused about the second story line happening with the detectives which was just extra fluff.

This is dramatic and entertaining, but some parts had me scratching my head because they wouldn’t happen in real life. I didn’t love it but I did appreciate a reality tv show on an island, I love reality tv

I tried this trope with Ruth Ware’s One Perfect Couple. She’s one of my favorite authors, and the story didn’t work for me even written by her. I didn’t enjoy this book.

This book started out a little shallow. It is a competition between icons in various industries, and there was not much detail nor did I get pulled in to the competition. It felt like it was just a side event, the main event of the whole thing were the relationships between the players. The game itself was not very exciting or entertaining. As you get to know the characters, you get more emotionally involved, though the characters were so widely varied in their motivations, personalities and characters.

Once I got into the story, the killing of one contestant, it was interesting to see where it all was leading. I love a book that surprises me with the ending and this one did. I am usually pretty good at figuring out where a story line is going, and I was wrong with this book. I appreciated that.

Overall, I did enjoy the book and it took me a few chapters to be engaged to where I wanted to know what happens at the end. I think if the game was more believable, and maybe some of the relationships were more believable, it would have earned 5 stars.

One of my favourite sub genres is the reality show on an island and this one was that and then some.

With a murder revealed in the first couple of pages, you get to watch the episodes of the show as they aired on network tv. I could easily find myself rooting for some characters and hated others. I loved the formatting of the book for sure!

Locked room mysteries are so much fun as you see who is lying and who’s not.

Thank you NetGalley, Sourcebooks Landmark and the author for a copy of the eARC for an honest review.

When six people are left on a remote island as part of a new reality show, the World is hooked. When one of the contestants dies ... Has the audience just witnessed a murder?

Honestly this was not the book for me. I love a good mystery, but this was so boring and drawn out that I couldn't connect with it. I didn't care enough about the character who died to be at all bothered that he was gone, and I didn't care at all who had killed him. Then the ending was a bit of a disappointment too, without any real twists.

Thank you to the publisher for providing a copy for review

Unfortunately, this was a DNF for me. I did not click with the writing style at all, and found it very hard to stay immersed in the story because of this. Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher in exchange for an honest review.

The premisse of this is so much fun. It sounds so intriguing: a suspected murder on a reality show, with millions of people seeing it happen live. But the execution was nowhere near as intriguing as I expected. The characters are dull as hell. They're bland, they're basic, and they never have even a single interesting conversation in the entire book.

Sure, they're unlikeable characters and you're not meant to root for them, but unlikeable characters should be interesting, they should pull you into the mess and the drama, and these just didn't.

To credit the author, the characters themselves do say how dull they are, how boring and uninteresting. They even say so several times. But because of that, I kept expecting something would change, there would be a twist that would finally pull me in. I feel like the book was self aware to some extent, but it never took that needed step to elevate the story.

I have read a few reality show/murder mystery based books and this one stole my attention and stole my heart. I thought that this book was really good. I enjoyed this from start to finish. I love that we have multiple POV’s and is full of who-dun-it, a fast paced story surrounding betrayal and pointing fingers.

This book will have you guessing and pointing your own fingers as the police are hurrying to try and sift through all the things to figure out who k!lled one of the contestants….you’ll never guess it! If you love a good murder mystery with games how backdrops then you will absolutely love this book! Take this book all the way to the top of your TBR.

oh. my. goodness. this book was absolutely incredible!!!! i had so much fun reading this book. it was lovely and wonderful and amazing. thank you so much to netgalley for letting me read this book before the publication date!!!

In this book, six contestants arrive on a desert island for a reality show, eager to compete for fame and fortune. However, tragedy strikes when one of the contestants, Rhys Sutton, dies on camera in front of millions of viewers. As suspicion and secrets unravel, five remaining contestants find themselves embroiled in a police investigation, each with their motives and hidden agendas. With the world watching, the true culprit must be revealed. While the premise is intriguing and full of suspense, the execution may falter in pacing and character development, leading to a slightly predictable resolution. Overall, this book offers a thrilling blend of reality TV drama and murder mystery, earning a three-star rating for its engaging storyline and tense atmosphere that keeps readers guessing until the shocking conclusion.

I really enjoyed the plot of this book, but at the end it just wasn’t for me. This book had long chapters and it felt like it took forever to read.

The concept of it being like an actual tv was really well thought out! But again I hated the long chapters.

I really enjoyed the social media posts at the end of the chapters that was so different to me and I really enjoyed it! It made it seem like you were really watching the show!

I lived for reality tv growing up in the 00’s, so I knew this book would be fun. Five people go onto this reality show for different reasons, and one of them winds up dead. The book goes back and forth between present time and when they were filming. I enjoyed the social media addition in there as well. The twists and turns were enjoyable to me.

Thanks as always to NetGalley for the ARC.

This is a unique take on a genre I feel like has become increasingly prevalent (novels that somehow touch/reflect on the protagonists’ time on reality tv). I loved it! Thank you so much for this ARC. I am actively seeking out more from this author.

I was here for the setting & the idea & I’m here for reality tv. I mean I watch bachelor/bachelorette, love is blind, the challenge, survivor l, etc. So I’m here for the 24/7 filmed reality tv, but when reading it in a book for some reason I just couldn’t get into it. These characters were all pretty awful. Dark pasts, jealously, rage, tension and so on. It was hard to know who to believe or trust. I guess that was the point though wasn’t it.

After loving Bea Fitzgerald's debut last year, I was excited to hear the announcement of a mystery novel. I was lucky enough to receive an e-arc, and I was not disappointed.

One of the things I enjoyed the most about this book was the structure of the chapters. With a reality TV show taking centre stage in the plot, having each chapter be an episode of the show was a clever take. Though as readers we were treated to a little more insight into what was going on, this set up added a little more immersion into the story and the mystery surrounding the death of Rhys Sutton - one of the show's contestants.

Further adding to the reality TV style, snippets of the contestants commentary were interspersed throughout the chapters - the thoughts, feelings or 'performance' they were giving the viewers during their moments in the Confessional Booth.

At the end of each chapter, we see the police discussing the episodes and interviewing the surviving contestants as they investigate what really happened to Rhys. Was it really an accident, or was someone really able to get away with murder with so many people watching?

Finally, the chapters round off with some social media style commentary. With social media discussions (and discourse) being such a part of reality TV shows in real life, I found this was a really nice touch, and really helped to position the reader as one of the show's viewers.

The characters themselves, whilst not without some redeeming qualities, were largely flawed which I think was necessary for this type of story. I can't imagine the drama having worked nearly so well if they were sweet team players rather than ambitious young adults willing to blur a few lines to achieve their goals.

While this wasn't a 5 star read for me, it was definitely a solid 4 stars and I would genuinely recommend it to people.