The novel’s pace and sense of journalistic realism are enhanced by de Vigan’s spare, direct prose, elegantly translated by Alison Anderson, and the transcripts of police interviews and other documents interspersed throughout the narrative ... Yet what really elevates this page-turner are its political urgency and psychological depth. De Vigan digs into both protagonists’ histories, unpacking the origins of their opposing attitudes toward social media ... If de Vigan’s chilling tale is as prescient as it seems, so-called kidfluencers are just one of the psychological ticking time bombs planted by the dissolution of privacy in our culture of unfiltered digital exposure.
With Kimmy's kidnapping at its center, Kids Run the Show has the shape of a thriller, but it's more sociological than mysterious and more interesting than involving ... The novel puts us into the viewer's position, participating vicariously in the story de Vigan tells, but never really, never quite, feeling it.
