Killer Content (Underlined Paperbacks) - Softcover

Roache, Kiley

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0593427491 ISBN 13: 9780593427491

Verlag: Random House Children's Books, 2021

Inhaltsangabe

Knives Out meets One of Us is Lying! In this twisty thriller a group of famous TikTokers begin turning on each other when one member is found dead at their beachfront Malibu mansion.

35 million followers. One dead body.

The six teenagers who make up the Lit Lair have it made. A beachfront mansion, millions of followers, stunning good looks, and sponsorship deals worth more money than they ever dreamed. They live together, making videos about their perfect lives.
 
Except it’s not so perfect after one of them turns up dead in the infinity pool. When the group TikTok account starts posting cryptic messages, the police stop looking outside the house for suspects—and start looking straight at them. Everyone in the Lit Lair had reasons why their lives would have been easier without Sydney Reynolds.
 
But only one of them killed her.

Underlined is a line of totally addictive romance, thriller, and horror titles coming to you fast and furious each month. Enjoy everything you want to read the way you want to read it.

Über diesen Titel

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Kiley Roache is an author and journalist. Her novels include Frat Girl and The Dating Game, and her articles have been published by The Wall Street Journal, San Francisco Chronicle, and The New York Times, among others. She is a graduate of Stanford University and Columbia Journalism School. When she isn’t writing, Kiley spends her time drinking iced coffee, painting in her backyard, and racking up screen-time hours scrolling through TikTok and Instagram.

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1

17 Hours Before 

Gwen 

“I swear to God, if we don’t get it this time, I’m going to kill you both.” Cami’s face is red with exertion. She grabs my arm, her grip a bit too firm, and guides me through the moves again. “It’s right, left, turn, and pose, okay?” 

“So basically, how we’ve been doing it?” I mumble. 

“How I’ve been doing it. You’re still off,” Cami snaps. 

Cami’s full name is Dolores Camila Villalobos de Ávila, but almost everyone calls her Cami, since, in her words, Dolores is a name for a grandmother, not a TikTok star. 

She thinks she’s in charge because she’s the only one with “real” dance experience. She went to the School of American Ballet for two years, until she hit puberty and her curves became too pronounced for the world of classical dance. Cami’s always patronizing me for not being formally trained or knowing all the proper dance terms--A frappé is not just something you get at Starbucks, Gwen. If I wanted to, I could be just as condescending back. It would be easy to knock her down a peg--remind her that I’m the one with eighty million TikTok followers, while she lags behind by more than half. That although she may know the “correct” way to count music, there’s only one queen bee in this house: me. 

But instead, I keep my professionally plumped lips sealed and nod along as she walks me through the forty-five-second dance for the tenth time. If I say anything now, things will just devolve into another fight, and she’s right, we don’t have much time left to get this right. 

I honestly can’t tell the difference between what I was doing before and what she wants me to do now. But she seems pleased with my improvement. 

“All right, let’s run it again.” She turns to Tucker, who had been filming us but is now lying across the foot of Cami’s bed, scrolling through Instagram. He’s gone ahead and made himself comfortable, with his long limbs sprawled out. Tucker is six foot two, and from what I can tell, there’s not been a moment in his seventeen years of life during which he’s worried about the space he takes up. 

“Huh?” He looks up from the phone. His eyes go wide as he registers Cami’s expression: so grumpy she looks kind of constipated. “Oh, ready.” He stands up and adjusts the backward baseball cap on his head. He raises the phone and taps the screen to record. “Action!” 

The music plays from TikTok, and we writhe and gyrate to the immortal sounds of the Pussycat Dolls. 

“When I grow up / I wanna be famous / I wanna be a star.” 

Forty-five seconds later, Cami yells, “Cut.” She snatches the phone from Tucker. “I think this is the one.” She turns the phone so I can take a look. I watch us dance on the small screen. “See, I knew it wouldn’t look off balance with just two of us.” 

“Yes, why apologize to your friend when you can just ignore the rule of thirds?” Tucker says. 

“Exactly,” Cami says, brushing off his sarcasm. She swipes through potential filters for our video. “And might I remind you that I’m not the only one Sydney’s mad at.” 

Tucker bristles. 

We haven’t been able to dance in our usual formation--Sydney to my right, Cami to my left--since the big fight two days ago. Sydney stormed off that night, headed for her parents’ house in the hills. She hasn’t sent anyone here so much as a Snap or a text--let alone indicated she’s ready to shoot TikToks with us again. 

“Are you sure about the song?” Tucker changes the subject from his girlfriend’s disappearing act. “You don’t think it’s a bit too on the nose?” 

Cami shakes her head. “It’s tongue-in-cheek, Tucker.” 

“What do you mean?” I say. Confused, I touch my own cheekbones, then the tip of my nose. Contour comes off on my fingers. “Does my nose look big in the video? Let me see it again.” 

Cami rolls her eyes. 

Tucker laughs at me. “Not literally noses and cheeks, Gwen,” he says. “They’re expressions.” 

“Duh, I knew that.” I straighten my shoulders. “I was just trying to be funny.” 

“Sure, honey,” Cami says with a look of pity. 

Embarrassment burns hot in my chest. I hate when people think I’m dumb. People assume that since I’m seventeen, platinum blond, and basically as close to looking like Barbie as La Mer skin care, the Tracy Anderson Method, and Dr. Malibu (Plastic Surgeon to the Stars) can get me, I must also be shallow. But I’m not. I’m actually quite smart, in my own way. 

I may not know much about the sorts of things they teach in school, or what “on the nose” means, which everyone else does, apparently. But I know the right time of day to post an Instagram, which is different from the right time to post a TikTok. I know which camera angles work best for me, and I know to match an ironic sound with a thirst trap, so you don’t seem too into your own looks. I know how to put out enough content to stay relevant without becoming overexposed. 

And I thought up this plan. Everyone forgets that, because it was Sydney’s parents who signed for the mortgage. But it was actually my idea to form the Lit Lair--to gather a bunch of teenage TikTok stars and move into a Malibu mansion to create content together. I thought that if we appeared in each other’s videos, our accounts would all grow much faster than they would apart. And I was right. I recently learned it’s called synergy--when two plus two makes five instead of four. But even before I knew the term, I knew it was a good idea. 

When it comes to turning myself into a brand, I have a gift. As Paris Hilton once said, “Some girls are just born with glitter in their veins.” That’s me. I always knew I was meant for this life. Even when my mom and I were living in a cramped studio apartment and my bed was a pullout couch, I’d look at my secondhand Barbie Dreamhouse and just know I was meant to live in a place like that. 

It may look like fun and games, us all living in this house together--swimming in the infinity pool, making up dances, playing pool in the dining room--but really, it’s serious business. We have thirty million followers on the @LitLair_LA account. Plus, we all have our personal profiles, with at least ten million followers each (I’m the one with the most followers, and Sydney and Cami are always fighting for a distant second). 

All these followers mean sponsorship deals, and not just with any random company--after all, we have our brand to protect. We work mostly with Fortune 500 companies. And my rate per post is at least $30,000. Since we moved into the house at the beginning of the summer, I’ve made more money starring in a series of sixty-second videos than most Hollywood starlets make for an entire film. 

Not bad for a girl with no talent, as Kim Kardashian would say. And that’s the blueprint, really. If you’re going to monetize your personal brand, there’s no better example than the patron saint of influencers out in Calabasas.

That’s why lately I’ve been trying to diversify my portfolio. Things may appear perfect from the outside, but I’m terrified that one day I’ll just be someone...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Random House Children's Books
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2021
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 0593427491
• ISBN 13: 9780593427491
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Anzahl der Seiten: 336
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Penguin Random House Ireland; https://eu-contact.penguin.ie; ; Arnulfstr. 124; München; 80636; Deutschland