Island X by Marissa Yarrow
Mad Axe Media (July 2026)
Reviewed by Chandra Claypool
A thousand celebrities and influencers are invited to an island music festival and have to commit quickly or they will lose an opportunity of a lifetime. Imagine being invited to a party no one has ever heard of to really amp up your status in the online world and pump up those numbers! How could you refuse? You simply CANNOT.
Getting to the island, you find tons of people you are well aware of – some you are excited to see and others you roll your eyes at so hard you almost dislocate your eyeballs. But it is clear you are where you want and need to be based on the crowd. Then, a fatal accident occurs, and things start to go awry. They know what they saw, but no one else seems to remember things the way that they do. What is going on here?!?
I absolutely love the concept of this book! The characters were exactly as I imagined they would be – vapid, full of themselves, and desperate to one-up each other. Think about how influencers affect this world every day. Making millions off of videos selling products. What would happen if simply stating something creates the world instead? Is this brilliant or absolutely frightening?
While I found the social commentary fun and spot on with the way this world is today, towards the end I found the execution a bit… off. I do not know how to explain it without giving it away, but it just felt like it went a completely different way that did not quite fit this reader and took me out of it a bit. I feel that this was a bit ambiguous and I needed more from it. That final page, though, spot on, and Yarrow really nails it on the head.
As someone who has attended many music festivals and has dipped my toes in “influencing,” I don’t think I could turn down an offer such as this. After reading this novel, I think I would have to, though!
Tag yourself in if you love creepy, modern horror that capitalizes on the influencer world that we are all affected by in one way or the other. Be careful what you wish for – that algorithm will get you every time!
