Lord of the Fly Fest by Goldy Moldavsky

The Quick Cut: A girl with a true crime podcast spends her life savings on an island music festival ticket and an opportunity to put herself on the map. Chaos ensues when it turns out the festival is a hoax with the attendees abandoned on an island. A Real Review: Everyone by now has heard about the failed music festival of 2017 called Fyre Festival. With it's failed setup and missing minimum essentials for safety, many things went wrong. However, could it have been worse? With this story centered on podcaster Rafi, the answer is definitely yes. Rafi is working on the second season of her podcast "Musical Mysteries" and needs an amazing idea to get it to another level. With a small audience, she's struggling to find sponsors who will work with her. Her solution? Spending her life savings for a ticket to Fly Fest - and a chance to interview famous singer River Stone, whose girlfriend disappeared under suspicious circumstances. Will she get the interview she needs? Or end up in more trouble than it's worth? First and foremost: this story is a satire on social media culture and the celebrity status they get nowadays. If you don't enjoy satire or ridiculous situations, please skip this book. It wasn't written for your reading style. For the rest of us, this is a hilarious romp that highlights we'll the ridiculousness of social media influencers. Rafi may be the main character, but she's no hero. In fact, she's kind of a self centered brat who thinks she's better than everyone else. She's willing to put anyone at risk to get what she wants out of this festival too. That is the point though. What happens is that as time goes on, Rafi is forced to face her true self. It makes for an internal struggle that I do wish lasted longer. I applaud the attention to detail the author had with this one. It's clear she got to know what happened at Fyre Festival and used it as a template for Fly Fest in her book. Those details were essential to me imagining the setting and it was an indelible one to be sure. A satirical look at social media culture that wraps up too quickly. My rating: 4.5 out of 5