Incarnate

by Alma Katsu

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

"Electric . . . A deliciously addictive techno-horror that you can’t look away from.” —Kylie Lee Baker, author of Japanese Gothic

Beauty doesn’t fade. It feeds.

Dorothy Wagner has spent her whole life wanting nothing more than to be seen. But after failing to make her mark as an influencer, she takes a job working for a brilliant coder whose company is focused on cutting-edge deepfake technology. And there, in secret, is where she creates her salvation.

Isabella. An impossibly gorgeous girl who takes social media by storm. Dorothy's artistry is brilliant, and Isabella seems so real that she garners millions of followers. But everybody knows overnight success doesn’t just happen. And when someone gets a little too close to the truth, a violent confrontation sends Dorothy on the run, forcing her to confront what she’s willing to sacrifice to keep her secrets.

A modern reimagining of a classic tale, Alma Katsu’s Incarnate is an illuminating, haunting tale of algorithmic worship and beauty that can kill.

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

Audible Audio

First published 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

[Dutchie]

If you ever were curious about social influencing, deepfakes, and body horror then this right here is the book for you.

Dorothy has always been more of an introvert with an amazing sense of eye for creating deepfake images. Outside of her normal workload, she has been putting extra hours into creating something more personal, a perfect woman whom she names, Isabella. With minimal effort, Isabella’s profile begins trending faster than normal, and Dorothy finds herself in a bit of a predicament as no one knows Isabella is not real. Or is she? Things begin to happen to Dorothy that she just can’t quite explain.

I have to admit I picked this one up solely based on the cover, so I was unaware of what it was really about besides the genre. This was one of those that hooked me from the first few pages. It was definitely interesting to say the least. I appreciated the level of detail that was put into the technological aspect of Dorothy’s job as well as the behind-the-scenes look at what goes into social influencing (besides the obvious). The horror elements were interspersed throughout to give it a bit of a different flair without it being over the top. I wasn’t trying to figure out what was going on or question anything; I was just along for the journey.

This is my first novel by this author, and I will definitely be looking into their backlist.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for my advanced copy in exchange for an honest review.

[Debra]

A reimagining of The Picture of Dorian Gray, yes please! Alma Katsu once again has wowed me with her writing, well thought out plot, and her cast of interesting and intriguing characters. Dorothy Wagner has always wanted attention. She would love to be an influencer but doesn't seem to have what it takes. But when her job at a tech company gives her access to AI technology, she secretly writes a code and voila, Isabella an AI creation, takes the internet by storm! She is beautiful, popular, and in demand. She is inundated with requests from brands seeking partnership and fans who want to meet her. Then things take a turn and things begin to change for Dorothy....

Influencers are everywhere, and Alma Katsu gives readers a glimpse into the lives of influencers alongside the life of deep-fake technology. This book explores themes of loneliness, popularity, self-esteem, mental health, power, technology, fitting in, the need to be seen, the drive to stay relevant, and the pursuit of beauty. What happens when social media, self-esteem, and technology collide in Incarnate???? You will need to read it to find out!

What a wild, entertaining, thought provoking, and horrific ride! I loved Alma Katsu's use of technology, AI, and the downfalls of social media in this book. Be sure to read the author's note at the end of this book.

Thank you to G.P. Putnam's Sons and NetGalley who provided me with a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. All the thoughts and opinions are my own.

[megs_bookrack]

**4.5-stars**

I was sold on Incarnate after seeing it described as a reimagining of The Picture of Dorian Gray, one of my favorite Gothic novels of all time, but for the internet age?

How was Katsu going to spin this? I had to find out.



In this story, we're following Dorothy Wagner, a VFX designer, who has always wanted to standout and be noticed. Dorothy was bullied terribly when she was younger, but she's come a long way since then. Old insecurities are hard to totally shake though, and she constantly feels like she needs to prove herself.

After she gets a job with a small upstart company that's focused on cutting-edge deep fake technology, her abilities to standout start to grow. The owner of the company, Tomas, who has a lot of nervous energy, but boundless knowledge, becomes a bit of mentor for Dorothy.

She learns so much from him that she's able to master the tech, and in her free time, she creates Isabella. The perfect girl, who takes social media by storm.



Everyone wants to be Isabella, and Dorothy finally feels like she's reaching her own potential, but as the partnership requests roll in, and the money starts to flow, the inevitable cracks start to show.

I know that rhymes. How perfect. Just like Isabella.



I thought this was incredibly-creative and it's actually my favorite Alma Katsu to date. They say to write what you know, and she definitely took that advice here. In the mid-2000s, Katsu was one of the US Intelligence community's 1st Social Media Researchers.

This book is a fantastic exploration of social media's influence in our lives, and some potential unintended consequences of disruptive technologies.

Framing the story as a The Picture of Dorian Gray retelling was a brilliant choice, IMO. It did drag just a touch for me at the end, but overall, it was a fantastic reading experience.



I loved the body horror bits Katsu included and definitely was impressed with how dark she actually ended up taking this story. Once Dorothy starts spiraling, she really starts spiraling. It was hard to predict how it could possibly end.

I would recommend this to any dark fiction Reader. It's a great melding of Techno-Thriller and Social Horror, with a dash of fantastical. I really appreciated all the pertinent issues that Katsu explored here. I think this would be a stellar book club pick, as there's so much to discuss.



Thank you to the publisher, G.P. Putnam's Sons for providing me with a copy to read and review. I cannot wait to get a hard copy of this one for my collection!

[Becky Spratford]

Review in the July 2026 issue of Booklist and on the blog: https://raforall.blogspot.com/2026/07... (link live on 7/8/26 at 7am central)

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)]

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.

[Nel]

popcorny (sometimes plain corny) writing that stretches itself too thin.

[Olive Fellows (abookolive)]

The Picture of Dorian Gray for the digital era?!?! Oscar Wilde fans ASSEMBLE!!!!

Click here to hear more about this book and my other anticipated releases of the upcoming quarter over on my Booktube channel, abookolive!

[Brice Montgomery]

Thanks to NetGalley & Putnam for the ARC!

Alma Katsu’s Incarnate is a woefully outdated tech fable built around an influencer culture that hasn’t existed in at least a decade.


The premise feels almost like a spoiler because Incarnate never moves beyond it, but it certainly has some Black Mirror appeal: a young woman who was bullied as a child makes a virtual avatar and skyrockets to overnight fame with the help of some mysterious entity. That’s it. Black Mirror works—on occasion, at least—because it understands that technology is a simple tool for reflecting the complexities of the human condition. Incarnate does the opposite at every turn, needlessly convoluting its understanding of tech to reveal a simplistic understanding of what it means to be human.

As a result, the novel’s central theme rings hollow and cliché: Social media isn’t real life, and fame isn’t everything.

To the story’s detriment, Katsu relies on a superficial familiarity with real-world and anachronistic touchpoints in a way that forces readers to take the novel at face value. We read about Mr. Beast because the book doesn’t understand him enough to transpose his equivalent into a heightened world. He has a lot of followers. That must mean something, right? Likewise, there’s handwringing over SonaAI—a thinly veiled reference to the now-defunct Sora—but there’s no real understanding of the ethical or aesthetic concerns surrounding such platforms. In fact, Katsu seems to think the threat is that they democratize excellence, rather than that they cheapen expertise. Most critically, however, the author grossly overestimates the role of influencers in society, and it saps all momentum from the book.

It’s 2026, and we’re already pretty deep into the dead internet. We don’t have the kind of monoculture that would produce prestigious thinkpieces on a single influencer, nor do influencers have the social capital they once did. Incarnate seems to think that Swiftie-level devotion follows virality, and that the possibility of a digital influencer would inspire mystique. But when more than 60% of real-life companies are using virtual influencers and it increasingly seems like Instagram has been cannibalized by AI OnlyFans accounts, these are irrelevant concerns. We now all recognize that we are consumers, and we care less about authenticity than about getting the experience we want.

These might just sound like stylistic nitpicks, but because Incarnate is so self-congratulatory in its moral critique, they make the book feel actively unhelpful. For example, in the novel’s final third, a pervy influencer is exposed as a perv, and the author writes:

“Society has weaponized women’s natural empathy against them. These two girls have been conditioned from birth to take the man’s side, to give men the benefit of the doubt while, at the same time, being suspicious of what a woman says. It’s ingrained by the time they’re this age, not realizing the unconscious bias that kicks in and makes them doubt even video evidence. Pics or it didn’t happen. Yeah, turns out even pics won’t sway some minds.”

Aside from the 2012ness of “pics or it didn’t happen,” the bigger issue is that we have societally decayed far more than Katsu seems to realize. If you’ve paid any attention to cultural discourse in the past five years, we are no longer conditioned to doubt whether men are predators; we are encouraged to believe that it doesn’t matter if they are. Those nuances matter when a book wants to trade in nuance.

In the novel’s afterward, Alma Katsu waxes poetic on her expertise as a technology forecaster in the early 2000s, and while much of what she describes feels resonant, it also strikes me as someone who still views the internet as a place one goes, rather than the primary place people live. The damning problem with Incarnate is that it refuses to acknowledge that we’re still not sure where technology is going, so it can't possibly be interesting or scary. Certainty is the enemy of drama.

Skip this one.

[Dana]

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.

[Mai H.]

ANHPI TBR

Halloween TBR

📱 Thank you to NetGalley and G.P. Putnam's Sons

[The Blog Without a Face]

Alma Katsu spent years as an intelligence analyst watching social media for the government, back when that was a job maybe four people had, and that's the part of Incarnate you can trust. The tradecraft is right. Metadata gets scrubbed. A VPN bounces six times around the planet. The lawyer's name comes off a matchbook. Somebody at a hype house tells the new girl to assume she's being filmed at all times, and the new girl has, no kidding, packed a trail cam she bought at a yard sale. The book around all that is a Faust for people who know what a followers-to-following ratio is. Dorothy Wagner, twenty-one, VFX grad from Jersey, nobody, follows the guy behind the #NotJessPerry deepfakes out to LA to manage his files. One sleepless night she takes the motion-capture files of a pop star who came in to get scanned for a makeup campaign, peels the face off, builds a prettier one on top, names it Isabella, and posts it to Instagram under the bio "The girl next door." Three hundred and fifty likes. Then an unknown number texts her. Looks like you made a friend. She's beautiful. Don't keep her all to yourself. By morning a video she hadn't even finished is live with twenty-five thousand likes on TikTok, and not long after that her pants start fitting like capris. That's a good hundred pages. There's also a creepypasta dropped into the middle of the book, a few pages about a troll named Rollo3341 who makes a teenager's shitty stories go viral, and I liked it more than most of the chapters around it. The body stuff, when it finally shows up, is good and gross. Growing pains at twenty-two. A face that's a few millimeters off in the mirror. An urgent care resident shrugging and going Bell's palsy, probably.

The devil is the weak link, which is a hell of a thing to say about a Faust. He texts like a LinkedIn recruiter. I know what you want, Dorothy. And I can help you get it. He says the price will be announced at a later date, then ghosts for a hundred pages at a stretch while Dorothy narrates her own feelings in the present tense like a woman reading her Apple Watch out loud. Relief. Excitement. Oh God oh God oh God, which shows up three times, verbatim. She also gets four uses out of "ghost in the machine," which is at least two over the limit. The book tells you flat out there is no possible explanation and then keeps its word, and I don't know, a deal with the devil where nobody ever names the price is just a woman having a real weird fucking year. The tech's got the shelf life of a banana too. The whole premise depends on one lonely genius hand-painting better fakes than the machines can, one strand of hair at a time, and by the time this hit shelves that's a thriller about the world's greatest MapQuest guy. The influencers read like somebody described them to Katsu over the phone. There's a Charli. She films from Cannes. She is in no way a stand-in for anybody. And every woman Dorothy meets turns out to be a middle school mean girl in a taller body, which is the point, I get it, it's also the only move she's got. None of that killed it for me. Katsu knows what a like feels like at three in the morning and what a year of them does to a person, and her ugliest idea, that Isabella is out there walking around on a real woman's borrowed skeleton, goes somewhere. Read it on your phone, in bed, brightness all the way up. That's the format the thing was written for, whether she meant it or not.

- Review by Mr. November

[Bookreporter.com Mystery & Thriller]

By definition, “incarnate” means embodied in flesh; in human form. Alma Katsu takes this concept and places it inside a story of the same name. It is a cautionary tale for the modern age, where the nature of what is human and what is real is in the eye of the social media beholder.

Katsu has created works of literary horror, as well as fiction involving the US spy game, which she knows about firsthand. INCARNATE is unlike any of her prior novels as it provides psychological thrills, mystery and a touch of very human horror in a story that lambastes the deepfake technology that we have seen become a daily occurrence due to the power of artificial intelligence.

All Dorothy Wagner ever really wanted was to be seen by someone. We learn about a bullying incident involving a young Dorothy that ends tragically, resulting in her being put away in a reform school. Upon release, she goes to college and gets a degree that fuels her drive to be in the technology field. She moves to LA where she sleeps on the couch of a family friend while starting her job as a computer media influencer working for a brilliant coder whose company is on the cutting edge of deepfake technology.

Dorothy’s boss, Tomas Delgado, is more than a little impressed with her and immediately involves her in several interesting projects. Dorothy is a workaholic who rarely goes to her temporary home. Instead she chooses to work all night at Tomas’ business, where she uses his technology and computers to create an imaginary online star named Isabella. She provides her with an Instagram account, among other things, and is amazed by how many followers Isabella gains. Over time, her popularity is almost at a Kardashian level, and Dorothy contacts a friend of Tomas who is an outstanding agent to get her to manage Isabella’s career. All along, she is not revealing to anyone that Isabella is not a real person.

Someone who knows frighteningly too much about Dorothy and her dreams reaches out to Isabella, offering to make her bigger than anything else in the world. The nameless online contact comes off initially as a creepy stalker type, but when everything he promises comes true, Dorothy begins to listen. He then focuses on transforming the plain and unseen Dorothy, who physically begins to resemble Isabella herself. Astute readers will realize at this point that this is going to go bad in a big way, and Dorothy will end up paying a huge price for the new recognition she has garnered from her fake persona.

INCARNATE is a wonder to behold. It takes us behind the curtain of social media influencers and the powers of deepfake technology, and completely corrupts them with an evil that is as tempting as that of original sin in the Garden of Eden. Mystery, murder, deceit and more surround Dorothy, who flees her identity and even her country to escape the retribution she must face when payment comes due to her deal with the devil.

Alma Katsu refers to the book as a modern retelling of Oscar Wilde’s THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY, and she does so masterfully with a lead character and a story that are quite unforgettable.

Reviewed by Ray Palen

[ThatBookish_deviant]

3.5/5

[Teri]

*spoilers*
Thank you, NetGalley for the ARC of Incarnate by Alma Katsu. The book starts out with the FMC having a rough time when she was a teenager, always being bullied and never fitting in. Fast forward to being fresh out of college and working with social media and AI. She vies for respect, admiration and relevancy in her job and in her personal life. She lands a perfect job, however, cannot get the feeling like she still needs more and so she creates her perfect avatar created using AI and plasters it on social media... it falls flat to her dismay. She receives a message from an unknown sender asking if she would like help getting her notoriety BUT for a price. She agrees and the attention, likes and comments start rolling in and she starts to feel powerful. But there comes a problem... and she playing with fire. Soon, she begins to notice her physical appearance is changing; morphing to look like her AI created avatar and things start to get very weird. The MC is having trouble keeping her secrets from everyone and things start to get deadly.
I think the premise of the story was well intended. Especially nowadays when social media and AI are so often seen and used on all platforms and influencers trying to stay relevant and get paid. I just didn't like the FMC or any other character. I did in the beginning feel sorry for the FMC but then when she started getting noticed and the notoriety for the avatar, she just had this ugly soul and I couldn't like her for anything. Another thing I didn't care for much was the plot holes with appearance and when she started morphing into her avatar.. I felt there could have been more creative ways to fix that but it was more like an easy-out for the way she handled it in the book. This book also reminded me of the Picture of Dorian Gray alot and I'm thinking maybe Alma Katsu was basing off her book loosely with that one? I'm not sure. This is my second book from the author. I absolutely, hands-down loved The Hunger and was hoping for a similar feeling with Incarnate but it fell flat to me.

[ari]

3.5 - A modern retelling of The Picture of Dorian Gray?! Sign me uppppp. I really enjoyed the modern take with a focus on social media and influencing. I felt like both Dorothy's job as well as the 'behind the scenes' of being an influencer were clearly well-researched for this novel (I know Katsu worked in intelligence analytics - it shows!). I would have liked a little bit more depth to Dorothy and the other characters. I get why she created Isabella but since we get breadcrumbs about her childhood, it doesn't all connect until the very end. I would have liked to see the reasonings behind her motivations earlier. I love how fast-paced this is and how quickly things spiral. I loved the clever spin on a Gothic classic and recommend this to any horror or thriller lovers.

Thank you to Putnam and NetGalley for the ARC.

[ScarlettAnomalyReads]

Dorothy just wanted to be someone, to be seen, to be known, anything and after failing at being a influencer has decided to go work for a deep fake company.. I see this getting dicey quick. But it's not that simple, it's not just some silly want, Dorthy spent most of her life being bullied and really just wants to belong and be seen, have friends, normal wants.

But she creates Isabella, who is perfect, beautiful and everything she wishes for, the money, the love, everyone wanting to be her friend, it's perfect, but is it?

The pressure, the people and the fame piles up and becomes too much and desperate to keep her identity a secret and Isabellas as well, things escalate and she has to go on the run.

This actually is now my second favorite Katsu, only beat out by The Hunger, wow this was good.

[Crystal Staley]

In our modern era of social media influencers, I really enjoyed this take on the cost of fame and seeing just how far someone would go. The main character, Dorothy, really is a product of the times she is living in. While she does have dreams and goals for work in the visual effect field, she still has this desire to be famous and desired on social media. This leads to her making some not so smart choices that may not end so well for her-even if she does get all she desires. This is a smart story tackling some big issues and I really enjoyed it. When you're not quite sure if what you see online is real, our lived experiences can seem irrelevant. When fame is the only goal, what is the point anymore? Highly recommend!

**thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for an early copy for review

[Jenny]

Noooo I’m so sad! I have been wanting to read an Alma Katau book for so long, but this just wasn’t it for me. I didn’t find anything compelling about it. The similarities to Dorian Gray were cool, but other than that I didn’t care for this. I thought it would be more about the dangers of AI in more of an intense and maybe true-to-life way. The craziness of AI is exponentially growing right now, and I thought this took a gentle look at it and that the “horror” was more the social media aspect which felt like information we’ve dealt with and had to move on from because real life is getting so out of control. It’s possible that my high hopes combined with disappointment was a double whammy and that’s why I’m giving this a 2, but I just didn’t care for this one. I’ll still give a backlist book of hers a try eventually.

[Marguerite Turley]

This book nailed the influencer culture. I’m so tired of the perfect people with the perfect content that for some reason everyone listens to. Alma really showed us the dopamine rush a person can get from clicks and likes and shares. It really is a frightening endless cycle that always ends in sadness. The MC Dorothy just wanted to be seen. To be the pretty one with the good hair. But she got way more than she bargained for. This was a perfect example of “be careful what you wish for”. Alma used her extensive background as a social media analyst to delve deeply into the seedier side of social media. This story became so insane I just couldn’t stop reading. Another well written, highly addictive story from Katsu that you don’t want to miss!

[Ria Maria]

I picked Incarnate for the very sophisticated reason that the cover was hot pink. I really had no idea what I was getting myself into.

This was definitely not what I was expecting, but I was pleasantly surprised! Fantasy/sci-fi/supernatural is normally not my cup of tea at all, yet somehow I sucked this one down pretty fast. It kept my interest way more than I thought it would.

I especially liked the glimpse into the AI influencer world. That whole concept was fascinating to me. The regular social media influencer stuff felt about 10–15 years dated. At times I was like…are influencers still doing this?? 😂
Did I have a good time reading it? Absolutely. It kept me interested, got me to read something outside of my usual wheelhouse, and I flew through it. Not bad for a book I literally chose because it was pink. 😂

3.5 stars!
Thank you, Netgalley, publisher, and author for the ARC.

[claudia reads it all]

I read this in one sitting, because Alma Katsu has the gift for writing such compelling stories that I just needed to know what would happen next.

Even though this is a take on The Portrait of Dorian Grey, there are plenty of twists and turns and Dorothy, our main character, just can't help but be sucked in by the lure of fortune and fame.  But of course, there is a price to be paid, and no matter where on the planet Dorothy goes to get away from the consequences of her actions, payment is still due.

I'm a long-time fan of Ms Katsu's and this is another fun story - well, fun amidst all the body horror and violence, but fun for me nonetheless.

[Zen]

3.75 stars
This author can be kind of hit or miss for me. I was excited about this being a re-imaging of The Picture of Dorian Gray as it is one of my favorite books. I think the author did a very good job of putting her own spin on the story with a twist.

[From The Reader’s Nest]

Crazy and way too realistic book on how much we can become identified and addicted to an online persona and habits. Very entertaining!

[Denise Ruttan]

I love Alma Katsu's writing, so even though books about influencer culture are generally flops for me even though I think that's a great vehicle for fiction, I decided to try her take on a Picture of Dorian Gray for the digital age. Fun premise. But this wasn't my favorite book of hers and that surprised me.

Dorothy is a VFX designer who is an extreme introvert. She struggled with childhood bullying from other girls, and female friendships all her life. She has no friends and spends all her time working. She takes a risk and reaches out to her idol, Tomas, who creates convincing deepfakes without AI. He's starting a business and asks her to come work for him, and she moves her life to LA. They create a deepfake of a famous pop singer, and Dorothy, who lives on her phone but is a lurker there too, has always dreamed of becoming an influencer.

She steals from Tomas's work to create her own avatar called Isabella, and becomes obsessed with her side project. A troll reaches out to her and promises her stardom, but there will be a cost. Thinking he's full of shit, she agrees. She becomes an overnight sensation. Then her body starts changing, in a spot of body horror reminiscent of The Substance.

But she struggles being an influencer too because she bungles all her social interactions in the real world. And how long can her new, beautiful life last before the devil comes to collect his due?

I did enjoy the look at Internet culture. The author's background in intelligence related to emerging technologies really shines through here. I found it convincing that the devil was online offering bargains for Internet fame.

But where this fell short for me was for a book by an author advertised as a horror maven, this wasn't really horror to me. The body horror was creepy, but this felt more like a true crime story, women's fiction, or contemporary, with a critical commentary on the dangers of internet culture. It just wasn't creepy enough.

Then I felt the character development fell short. I'm okay with unlikable characters but I found Dorothy incredibly unlikable, when I really wanted to root for her and feel sympathetic to her plight. At first I related to her because I too have struggled with female friendships and bullying from women. But then I found it weird that she didn't have any friends at all, not even an online friend. I have friends, mostly online. Introverts do have friends.

And I struggled with her motivations. I could not understand her motivations for wanting to become an influencer because of her childhood trauma around cyberbullying. She didn't seem like a narcissist or vain. I found her to be a pretty flat, arrogant character. I also struggled with how all the women in this were so mean and toxic. It made Dorothy seem like a pick me girl who had a lot of internalized misogyny, a very annoying character type.

Sadly this one was a miss for me, but I still hope to read more by this author.

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for the advance review copy. I am leaving this review voluntarily.

[She’s]

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.

[Tammy - Books, Bones & Buffy]

The nitty-gritty: A young visual effects designer discovers the dark side of social media and fame in Alma Katsu's latest, a fast-paced, modern day cautionary tale.

Alma Katsu has taken her knowledge of social media—she was one of the first social media research analysts—and turned it into a harrowing tale about the price of fame. Incarnate is a modern take on The Picture of Dorian Gray, and I absolutely loved the way the author took the core idea of the classic tale and twisted it into a horror story involving social media influencers and the pursuit of fame and beauty. 

Dorothy Wagner is a VFX (visual effects) artist and has just landed her first job in Los Angeles. Tomas Delgado is known for his cutting edge video designs, which blend live action, AI and computer generated effects, and Dorothy is thrilled to be working for him. Her first project involves creating an avatar for a famous singer, who wants to get into advertising but is too busy. Tomas’s team will create a digital version of the singer that will look almost completely real and can “act” in ads without the singer’s direct involvement.

Dorothy becomes obsessed with the woman’s beauty and the motion files they’ve created that act as the basis for the avatar design, and she decides to use the files and tweak them to create her own avatar, fully knowing that what she’s doing is illegal. As a child, Dorothy was always teased and bullied and was never part of the popular crowd, so she sees this as a way to finally get some attention. She creates a gorgeous digital woman she names Isabella, with the most stunning hair color and a perfect figure and face, and decides to launch an Instagram account to see if she can get Isabella to go viral.

And she does. Isabella is suddenly the hottest thing on the internet, but she’s also a mystery. Dorothy has made sure that Isabella can’t be traced back to her, but she has a problem. An internet troll is messaging her, promising to make all of Dorothy’s dreams come true, and he seems to know about her connection to Isabella. When Dorothy starts changing in impossible and frightening ways, she wonders if she’s gone too far.

Incarnate gives readers a behind the scenes peek into the world of social media influencers and how far some people are willing to go to achieve fame and fortune. It also incorporates the growing trend of “deepfakes,” creating lifelike AI personalities who can replace real humans, a truly horrifying idea. I’m usually not a fan of “influencer” stories, but I found Katsu’s ideas and scenarios fascinating. The idea that you can become a millionaire simply by getting enough followers on Instagram and TikTok baffles me, and while I know it happens and there are lots of influencers out there doing just that, it still doesn’t feel like “real work” to me, lol.

I loved the speculative element and the way the author has taken The Picture of Dorian Gray and given it a modern twist. Without giving too much away, Dorothy’s creation (Isabella) is spilling over into her personal life. One day she wakes up and realizes her pants are too short. This is followed by splitting headaches, and one look in the mirror confirms that something both terrible and wonderful is happening to her body. And of course, if you are familiar with Dorian Gray, Dorothy’s changes must be counteracted in some way, and that’s where the real horror comes in. Katsu’s explanation for why all this is happening is a chilling "deal with the devil" scenario that added an extra layer to the story.

Dorothy’s personality isn’t too far off from her namesake. She’s extremely driven by her need to be “seen,” having suffered from bullying most of her childhood. She’s determined to become wealthy and famous through Isabella, and as the story progresses, the things she’ll do to achieve that get more and more risky. I have to admit I really didn’t like Dorothy at all, despite feeling a tiny bit sorry for what she’s been through as a child. But her behavior is very immature. She tries to get what she wants through tantrums and threats, and ultimately I had a hard time rooting for her. Not to mention some of the things she does later in the story!

The story takes some weird turns in the second half, including an influencer house party that Dorothy gets herself invited to (Is that a thing? Do famous influencers really hang out together?) There’s also a violent event that propels her to make a few radical decisions, and I’m not sure how successful this subplot was. But the ending was fantastic, and it really brought the rest of the story’s themes full circle.

Incarnate is a quick, entertaining read that reminds readers to "be careful what you wish for."


Big thanks to the publisher for providing a review copy.

[Lexxi]

This was my first time reading this author. The book was fine - not great but not awful.

Our main character Dorothy works for a computer guy who is working on groundbreaking software to create deepfake avatars of real people. Dorothy uses some of the motion capture footage from a celebrity to create a deepfake, Isabella. She posts as Isabella on Instagram and then gets a message from a rando who promises to make Isabella go viral and just will want something in return later (a la Rumpelstiltskin). It works but (obviously) stuff goes wrong.

The first half of the book was interesting but I kept waiting for something more to happen in the second half. I don't know if it's because I read so much mystery and horror but I was expecting some type of surprise or reveal; we didn't get that.

I had a lot of trouble relating to Dorothy. She had some hinted at past incident in her past but when it was revealed, it was a bit of a letdown. When stuff started going wrong, her reaction was not what I would expect of a normal person. She's an unreliable narrator which was interesting.

I kept comparing this book with Julie Chan is Dead. In both cases, we get dropped into the world of influencers. For Julie Chan, it felt more realistic/believable. Here, even allowing for the supernatural element and suspending disbelief, it just didn't make sense that with a couple of TikTok videos, Isabella has obsessed superfans. And though I didn't like the direction that Julie Chan went in the final section, it at least went somewhere.

This wasn't a bad book and it had such good potential, so it was a bit of a letdown.

[Beth]

Thank you to NetGalley and Putnam | G.P. Putnam’s Sons, as well as the author, for this ARC in exchange for my honest opinion.

#NetGalley #Putnam #GPPutnamsSons #AlmaKatsu #Incarnate #Horror #Fiction #Books #Reading #BookReviews

Title: Incarnate

Author: Alma Katsu

Format: eBook

Publisher: Putnam | G.P. Putnam’s Sons

Publication Date: September 22, 2026

Rating: 5 Stars

Themes: Technology, AI, mental health

Trigger Warnings: Body horror, gore, violence, mental health issues, spiraling thoughts, depression, suicidal thoughts, bullying

I’m not going to lay out a synopsis here because this book needs to tell you itself. Go in blind. All I’ll say is that it’s techno horror and a very modern take on Wilde’s “The Picture of Dorian Gray”. Knowing this won’t affect your reading experience. It’s not a copy of it.

This is another great novel by Alma Katsu. While “The Hunger” is still my favorite of hers, I’ll have to call this a close second. Everything about this book is uncomfortable and squirm worthy. We watch our narrator make bad choice after really bad choice as the story progresses. So many of us struggle with internet use and AI and this book made me second and third guess everything I’ve ever done! The body horror was well done, much like in the movie, “The Substance”, and woven into a slow burn horror that feels entirely too real. We all think we know the downside of social media and AI but just wait. This is an absolutely wild horror/thriller that I couldn’t put down. Any fan of technology/ socio horror will love this one.

[Trace]

When I first read the premise of Incarnate by Alma Katsu I was really excited to see where the book was going to go. With AI bringing all kinds of horrors to real life, I wanted to see where it would go in a horror novel and had high hopes. I was ready to see what all could go wrong when a woman created a fake influencer using stolen technology. I was especially drawn into Alma Katsu's mechanics for bringing that AI creation into reality. I had high hopes for where the book was going and what exactly the power was behind the creation of the real Isabella.

Unfortunately, I don't think that the book went far enough for me in exploring just how everything was happening. I can be good about suspending my disbelief pretty far in reading but the main conceit of this book was that something was behind what was really happening. I would have liked more about it, and though I suppose it was left open ended for the reader to decide what sort of forces were at play, I feel like there could have been a lot more told around that story that would have made this a more interesting ready for me.

That said I still thought this was an easy and fun read and I did enjoy it. My criticisms took it to a 3.5 star, but I rounded it up because I was compelled to keep reading and I did really have a good time reading it even if I would have enjoyed it being more thoroughly fleshed out in some areas.

Thanks to NetGalley and Putnam for sharing this book with me.

[Thomas Kiley]

Dorothy has tried to make her way in the entertainment business and her newest venture is working for one of her idols who is the leader in making deepfake videos. Dorothy uses her own knowledge to take some footage from work and make her own unique woman, Isabella. After making a profile, Isabella begins to take off and Dorothy quickly gets in over her head on the line between herself and Isabella.

Alma Katsu has created a great cautionary horror tale of the modern age, with elements of body horror and satire making an easy to read tale. Dorothy's journey moved much faster than I expected because Katsu really pushes Dorothy to the limit and way beyond where I thought the book would go. The book has a strong stance on influencers, AI, and deepfakes in a way that feels very tied to the present day but emphasizes themes that have been around since The Picture of Dorian Gray. This was not the book I would have imagined Alma Katsu writing, but she knocked it out of the park with a story that keeps escalating as Dorothy's nightmare becomes harder and harder to control.

Thank you to Putnam and NetGalley for a copy of Incarnate in exchange for an honest review.