Incarnate

by Alma Katsu

From beloved horror maven Alma Katsu comes a terrifying reimagining of The Picture of Dorian Gray for the internet age.

Beauty doesn’t fade. It feeds.

Marion Wagner has spent her whole life wanting nothing more than to be seen. But after failing to make her mark (any mark, really) as an influencer, she takes a job at a company focused on cutting-edge deepfake technology. And there, in secret, is where creates her salvation. 

Isabella. An impossibly gorgeous girl who takes social media by storm. Marion’s code is brilliant, and Isabella seems real. So real that she garners millions of followers. Brands beg to partner with her. Everyone wants to meet her IRL. The adoration—and the cash—flows in. Marion is finally happy. She's getting all the attention she ever wanted—isn't she? 

Then the cracks begin to show. Marion can barely stay ahead of the partnership requests, and love letters and the rabid fans filling her DMs trying to track Isabella down. All this time working in secret with all this pressure is getting to Marion—she can’t tell where she ends, and her creation begins. And when someone gets a little too close to her secret, a violent confrontation sends Marion on the run, forcing her to confront what she’s willing to sacrifice to keep her secrets. 

A modern reimagining of Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray, Alma Katsu’s Incarnate is an illuminating, haunting tale of algorithmic worship and beauty that can kill.

Genres: Horror, Adult, Social Media, Fiction, Retellings

Kindle Edition

Expected publication September 22, 2026

About the author

"Hard to put down. Not recommended reading after dark." -- Stephen King

"Makes the supernatural seem possible" -- Publishers Weekly

Award-winning author of eight novels, including historical horror (The Hunger, The Deep, The Fervor) and spy novels (Red Widow, Red London). Coming September 2025: FIEND (Putnam)

Reviews

[Becky Spratford · Rating 4 out of 5]

Reading for review in a future issue of Booklist

4.5 stars

Three Words That Describe This Book: retelling, squirm inducing, deal with the devil

There is body horror here as well-- VERY EFFECTIVELY USED body horror. Think the movie The Substance. But full disclosure, unlike the movie, this book has a satisfying ending that closes the loop of the story here and leave the horror itself open ended. And in fact, the last lines of this book are chilling and a little too real. So well done there.

The marketing on this one is correct. This is a retelling of the Picture of Dorian Gray by Wilde but for this exact moment. This was VERY well done. I can imagine how this book will make you feel (really uncomfortable because you see yourself in it and also terrified) is how Wilde's book made people feel at its time.

This book is so uncomfortable to read for so many reasons. Dorothy (our MC and narrator) is clearly making the wrong choices. We know from the prologue that she has some evil tendencies, but OH MY GOD does she make bad choices. And then we watch her continue to make bad choices, they are spiraling, and yet, as readers, we cannot look away. We fell her joy as she gets more and more followers. We know that there is a supernatural force behind it all though. This is revealed at the beginning of her journey to create the perfect influencer-- Isabella. She has to agree to some force that clearly has access to everything she is doing, even her thoughts-- she has to agree that she will pay a further price to have all the glory.

As Dorothy goes deeper and deeper into her deep fake of Isabella, things get bad. Yes she makes bad choices and chooses to lie cheat and steal to get the technology she needs. Yes she throws away an amazing opportunity to be not he ground floor of a VR company. Yes she compromises all of her relationships-- work, friends, family. YEs she makes a faustian deal with an unknown but powerful demon. All of these choices make the reader squirm with discomfort. But then, about halfway through-- after you are invested in Dorothy (you know she is not someone you should trust and like, but also you can't stop watching her, which is discomfiting on its own) Katsu take everything up an other notch. I will not give it away because WOW it is gross and fascinating, but it is also what takes the story from a scary cautionary retelling to a wholly original and stand alone horror novel for our times. And written by someone who was a national security analyst looking at the horror and harm social media could cause back in the days before anyone else was looking at it.

This book move quickly and yet it does not feel rushed. I kept turning the pages and was hooked. Then I looked up and I was like, wait...75 pages just went by when I blinked.

For readers who like faustian bargains, in the vein of All's Well by Awad, We Sold Our Souls by Hendrix, and especially The Substance (movie). People who enjoyed Bury Your Gays by Tingle will also like this one-- the way it seriously tackles the horror of AI while still being a satisfying horror novel. Youth Juice by Sathue

But really this book is singular and not exactly like any of these. It really is an effective and terrifying retelling of the Wilde.

[Nikki Lee (Nikkileethrillseeker) · Rating 4 out of 5]

Holy shit, this was some straight influencer hell. When I started this, I had absolutely no idea where this was going. All I knew was that it was about the tech industry. That’s it. I finished it in 24 hours, so that should tell you my level of excitement to finish it!

Dorothy flies across the country to accept an intern position for a small company that creates cutting edge AI. She has excellent coding skills but wants to learn more.

One night, she creates her own AI Avatar, who’s incredibly beautiful, with her boss’s files. Meet Isabella. She decides to put her on Instagram and see what happens. Little does she know how powerful Isabella is about to become. Be careful for what you wish for.

Let’s just say things escalate from there. 😳😳😳 WOW! This was such an original story featuring AI technology. Incarnate is like nothing you’ve read before! Believe that. Dorothy continues to make the most hideous decisions but you can’t look away from the terrible trainwreck coming.

There’s lots of focus on influencer life, however, it’s highly fascinating! Themes here are power, beauty, the longing to be seen, and the addiction to social media and its users. There’s so much truth about the story in today’s culture and that’s downright sad. Scary even.

The substance meets The Picture of Dorian Gray. I freaking loved this book and I think horror fans will too. This is one you’ll definitely want to pre-order! Add it to your TBR NOW!

4 ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

BTW, after reading her Afterward, I went down a huge rabbit hole. 😆😆
— Fun fact— Alma Katsu was a senior intelligence analyst for the federal government. NO SHIT.

Out 9/22/26

Thank you to Netgalley and Putnam Books for the arc.

[Dana · Rating 3 out of 5]

Dorothy is looking for relevance, respect, and perhaps a touch of notoriety. She manipulates reality using methods that may not be wholly honest nor of-this-world, and Katsu takes us into a mind-bending tour of this pseudo-make-believe world.

There were aspects of the novel that I loved. The representation of social media and the influencer label was spot-on, in my opinion. Falsities made to sparkle and shine to bring in fame and power. I could relate to that desire for attention. And the ending, but I'll get to that later.

There were other aspects, however, that fell flat for me. I felt that the author did a lot of telling with too much description and depth at times. Little inconsistencies popped up here and there, one of which I couldn't get past, and it kept bugging me as I read. I can't go into detail because of spoilers, but it had to do with appearance and recognition. Also, everyone around the MC didn't seem realistic to me. They were more like clueless NPCs, and I had a hard time suspending my belief.

Having said all of that, this had one of the most well done endings I've read in a while. Katsu absolutely stuck the landing here. No loose ends, and it wasn't done in a rushed way. So good.

I will always recommend Alma Katsu to readers because I find her stories relatable and easy to read. Although this wasn't my favorite, I will do the same with this book.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for the advanced copy.

[She’s Stranger Than Fiction · Rating 4 out of 5]

In 1981, there was a movie called “Looker”. A plastic surgeon realizes his supermodel clients are dying. He eventually learns a company who could create computer generated images of models and use them to replace the models and actors themselves. This book made me think about that movie and realize that we are now realizing the technology that was sci fi in 1981.
Dorothy, the main character in Incarnate, works in AI, fine tuning AI simulacra into flawless deepfakes. She creates a character and launches her into social media. She is soon offered the opportunity to leave her physically and socially unremarkable self behind and become a social media It Girl, but there is always a price.
This book is filled with psychological obsessions, unethical compulsions, and sheer terror as the proverbial chickens come home to roost. This book is well-written and compelling. Dorothy is a multilayered morally grey character with a penchant for self-pity and paranoia. As she changes and grows, the reader can see how this story could go either way based on Dorothy’s choices. As Dorothy’s character arc picks up steam, the book ramps up the tension all the way to the surprising (though not spectacular) end. Recommend everyone give this one a try.

This is an honest review of an ARC from NetGalley and graciously shared by Penguin Random House and Alma Katsu. Thank you for the opportunity to enjoy this book.

[S.H. Mansouri · Rating 4 out of 5]

'Perception trumps reality. Perception IS reality.'

In the context of Incarnate--IRL too, really--how I wish this statement wasn't true. I picked up this novel because I have no idea what's it's like living in the kind of world Dot does, how the pressure, exposure, and isolation of the attention economy may slowly be eroding the souls of a generation who don't know life without its invisible tentacles. Man, this story was an eye-opener for me. I know what a 'hype house' is now.

Synopsis and spoilers aside, we begin with an 'incident,' something that happened to a twelve-year-old girl named Dorothy... something that will haunt her for the rest of her life. It's ten years later and Dot is working in the VFX field, an intern for an artist she admires, doing work she's proud of. But this dreadful sense of loneliness, of maybe feeling unappreciated, of having more knowledge and insight than those above her pushes her to create something that will eventually change her entire world. Her identity, even.

Long story short, Dot makes some horrible choices throughout this story, even to the end, but she's not entirely unsympathetic. You feel for her, the way she sees herself in the world, up to a certain point, because the nightmare journey she takes, it's not something that unfairly just happens to her--she's not Reagan playing with Ouija board. She makes choices. Makes a deal with an entity she thinks she can escape. Great line here: 'It wouldn't have been possible without your ego, your greed, your desire.'

Katsu puts the reader at a crossroads of sorts, begging the question: Is this supernatural, a malevolent entity doing all this, or not? Is it skewed perception? Trauma from what happened ten long years ago? And, based on the 'changes' Dot goes through, I think you can come to a concrete conclusion, and it's frightening. The whole read, you get a sticky feeling, like what you're reading is clinging to you, and the sense of dread you catch from the very first chapter is unavoidable. In a lot of ways, this story gets under your skin. The pacing is perfect, the close POV deft, and the tension leading up to the ending is inevitable--you will be compelled to keep turning pages. It's a 'bargain' story along the lines of 'The Picture of Dorian Gray,' but so much more timely and informative. About: 'Attention, the most precious and fragile substance in the world. Doled out by capricious algorithms, subject to the whims of the masses.'

While the last few pages left me wanting more, scratching my head, hoping for more of a collision, it works well, I think. Incarnate is like watching a car crash while someone keeps telling you it isn't real. It isn't real. It isn't real. Until you feel shards of glass imbedded in your face, smell the bodies burning.

Big thanks to NetGalley, Putnam, and Alma Katsu for the experience. Highly recommended.

[Nikki Kossaris · Rating 5 out of 5]

If Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray was reborn through influencer culture, deepfakes and the endless hunger to be perceived online, you’d get Incarnate. Alma Katsu takes a familiar cautionary tale and twists it into something cold, modern and deeply unsettling, where beauty isn’t just currency, it’s survival.

Dorothy Wagner is one of those characters who slowly gets under your skin. At first, her desperation to be noticed feels painfully human. The need for validation, the obsession with visibility, the fear of becoming invisible in a world ruled by algorithms, Katsu captures all of it with brutal precision. Watching Dorothy create Isabella, a flawless AI-enhanced online persona, feels disturbingly believable because it doesn’t feel far removed from reality at all. That’s what makes this book so effective. The horror comes less from jump scares and more from recognizing how easy it would be for someone to disappear into a curated identity and never want to come back out.

Katsu absolutely nails the atmosphere. There’s this constant slick, artificial sheen hanging over the story. The deeper Dorothy falls into Isabella’s success, the more the novel spirals into paranoia, obsession and violence. The tension builds quietly at first, then tightens hard once Dorothy realizes how much she’s willing to destroy to protect the illusion she created.

What really stayed with me is how sharp the commentary feels without ever becoming preachy. The novel understands influencer culture well enough to make its satire sting, but it also understands loneliness. Dorothy isn’t evil in a cartoonish way. She’s lonely, angry, ambitious and addicted to being wanted. That makes every terrible choice she makes feel horrifyingly understandable.

Fans of psychological horror and techno-thrillers will probably tear through this one. It feels especially suited for readers who loved the social horror elements of Black Swan or the identity-driven unease of Ingrid Goes West. Katsu blends classic gothic themes with modern digital anxieties in a way that feels smart, vicious and incredibly timely.

[Richard Quist · Rating 5 out of 5]

Incarnate by Alma Katsu asks the questions: "How far would you go to become famous and popular?" and "What price are you willing to pay?"

Dorothy Wagner, a frequent target of bullies while in middle school, has always been something of a loner. Intelligent, but insecure about her body image. Socially shy, but longing to fit in.

After graduating from college, Dorothy lands a job with a ground-breaking visual effects studio. She devises a plan to secretly leverage the company's superior software tools to create an artificial persona, Isabella, who can be everything Dorothy is not, hoping to turn her creation into a social media superstar and gain popularity and fame by proxy. Thinking she has nothing to lose and that it's probably a scam, she accepts an offer from an anonymous stranger, who promises to help her get what she wants. Dorothy soon learns the painful price of success, and discovers the dark lengths that she will go to in order to protect her secrets.

Incarnate is a riveting, dark tale of our time. As artificial intelligence runs rampant and social media sensations rise and fall, Alma Katsu has captured the devastating impact and horrific consequences these can have in the lives of those who fall victim to their glamour.

Incarnate can be seen as a cautionary tale about the addictive and toxic side of social media, the lasting impact of bullying, and the growing spread of AI-generated content and personas.

Thanks to G.P. Putnam's Sons for providing an eARC of #Incarnate for review via #Netgalley.

[Mechele]

Incarnate authored by Alma Katsu

This was my first read of Alma Katsu and I really enjoyed it! Dot is our protagonist and we begin to follow her in childhood. She has developmental trauma that may help us understand more about her actions. Or perhaps not. The book is fast-paced, well-written and the main characters are thoughtfully fleshed out. There’s a good bit of body horror and it’s the perfect amount of gore for the fabulous story that it is; it is never intrusive enough to take us away from the heart of the book. There was an interesting mystery at the beginning of the book that stuck with me and Alma had spot on timing about when to reveal it.

As a tech-phobic Gen X-er it was really interesting to me to learn more about AI and do an Influencer deep dive into a world that I know so little of. Alma has lead a very interesting life that she calls upon to come up with much of the information in this book. What stuck with me through this book was the insanity of Influencers and what a devastatingly cruel life they can have, the obsessive need Dot to feels to belong, and how far she will go to get external validation. She is obsessed and acts like someone in the throes of addiction. I don’t think I liked Dot, but I felt for her. This is a cautionary tale through and through.

My thanks to Putnam for allowing me to read this ARC. Look for it on shelves near you on September 22, 2026, it’s a great read.

[✩｡°⋆ Lala ⋆｡°✩ · Rating 4 out of 5]

✦•┈๑⋅⋯ Incarnate by Alma Katsu ⋯⋅๑┈•✦


⭐️ 4.5 •

Incarnate is a slow burn psychological thriller that focuses on identity, memory, and the unsettling gaps between who we are and who we want to be. Katsu thoughtfully explores how those early fractures shape Dorothy's choices, and how obsession can blur into something that feels almost compulsive. There’s also a sharp look at influencer culture and the pressure to constantly shape how they’re seen online, which adds a grounded edge to the story.

Dorothy isn’t always easy to like, but her need for belonging, shaped by early experiences and a deep hunger for external validation, makes her unraveling feel believable and quietly affecting. Her descent into obsession is gradual and compulsive rather than sudden, which fits the tone well.

It’s eerie and thoughtful, with a quiet emotional restraint that suits the subject matter. More introspective than explosive, more atmospheric than action driven, but consistently engaging in the way it slowly settles in rather than demands attention.

If you like: 
✔️ identity driven thrillers
✔️ psychological tension
✔️ slow burn pacing
✔️ morally complex characters
✔️ atmospheric fiction
✔️ obsession  

📅 Pub Day: Sep 22 2026  📚
💌 ARC gifted via NetGalley from G.P. Putnam's Sons Publishing. All opinions are my own.
🗣 QOTD: Which 2026 release are you most excited for?

[Kara Galvan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Alma Katsu had me at social-media-Dorian-Gray-retelling. How has this not been done before!!?

Incarnate delivered my expectations but it delivered nothing more. Yes, there are horror elements, but I think it's a great disservice to the horror genre and the novel to be labelled as much. I think contemporary fiction would suffice.

What this novel does well: it's relatable. In the modern social media age, many people would wager deadly bargains for success and death re: content creation. Dorothy is one of them and her hesitations and desires feel fully fleshed out and believable. I don't think there was enough time / space in the novel to extrapolate to the extent that I wanted. I wanted more time with Dorothy with what she wagered and because of that, the climax and resulting tensions fell flat for me.

The very ending was incredible. The whole time, Dorothy and the reader are wondering what Dorothy lost in this deal and it's really satisfying once that knowledge comes to fruition.

Overall, this is a really great modern day, social media age retelling of The Picture of Dorian Gray. Parts fell flat for me and I don't consider this very horror-y, but it's a spot on retelling and an excellent reminder of the limitations and issues with social media and success that stems from there.

Thank you NetGalley and the publisher for the opportunity to read this ARC!

[Stephanie B. · Rating 5 out of 5]

This isn’t the first book I’ve read by this author, but it’s by far my most favorite to date. I was immediately hooked into the premise, and the writing made me feel like this could actually happen in real life, with how huge social media is in contemporary society. The creepiness was unsettling here, introduced so slowly that readers are almost as blindsided as the FMC when bad things start to happen. I found this to be perfectly eerie, again making the book seem real. This book also shows the juxtaposition with influencer life, which isn’t always as glamorous as it may seem. I read the majority of this book in two sittings as I couldn’t put it down and needed to know what happened next. The plot stands out next to other books in this genre, and is one that I’ll be thinking about for a while to come. I highly recommend giving this one a read!

[frank · Rating 4 out of 5]

thanks to Putnam and Net Galley for a copy of this ARC

3.5 rounded up for good reads

Incarnate is a fun little novel that mixes machine and magic in a very interesting way.

Personally I was more interested in the becoming than the finished creature and wished we could have spent a little more time on that aspect as opposed to the actual influencer part

This is a very timely horror that plays on the fears of ai, identity and of being unable to tell whats real and whats fake and if you are interested in any of those subjects I’d recommend.

In a lot of ways this reminded me of the substance in a very fun way.

[Zoe Lipman · Rating 5 out of 5]

4.5/5

I really enjoyed this! And I sped through it in two sittings. (It's also fairly short, not much over 200 pages, so I think many readers could speed through this.)

This is another suspenseful book about influencers and that world.

This is definitely my favorite book that I've read from this author!

This was tense and suspenseful and intriguing and full of questionable characters. This is another one of those thrillers that had me on the edge of my seat, waiting to see what was going to happen. And that's what makes a good thriller to me.

Thanks to NetGalley for the e-ARC of this book in exchange for my honest review!

[Joanne Hale · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fantastic! Alma Katsu has done it again!

A modern suspenseful novel sent in our current world revolving around the digital arts, social media , influencing, and control.

Premise:
Dorothy starts working for a famous lone wolf of the digital arts world who has created a new process to achieve realness in computer images.

While working for him, in walks in an internet influencer, who requests work be done on making a perfect digital replica of herself so she can be in multiple places at once.

From there, it becomes an internal fight of morality and selling ones soul.

A beautiful dash of "The Picture of Dorian Gray"

I was on the edge of my seat, unraveling this story that kept my attention. I was obsessed with the destruction, the art, and the current social commentary that was woven seamlessly around our main character.

This is a must-read banger.

[Halli Starling · Rating 5 out of 5]

LOVED this. Intensely creepy and twisty enough to keep me reading (in one sitting!). And even when I knew what was coming, it was done in a way that was really enjoyable. My first Katsu book but not my last.

[alysbookclub · Rating 4 out of 5]

A great concept, well executed. Slower at some parts, and wish I had some more info by the end, but overall such a great read.