A young and beautiful woman wakes up in The Compound with 9 other beautiful women. They are being filmed, as in Big Brother. Soon the boys will be there and join the women. We read through the eyes of Lily and get to know all of her housemates. This is a dystopian not so far future, there are some references to “the wars” that the men have fought in. I am not certain why the author chose this to be dystopian – this could easily have been just an alternate timeline of our current universe, so giving this book the dystopian label may be disingenuous, there are no sci fi or even speculative fiction elements to this book.
It almost reads like a suspense thriller, although it isn’t very suspenseful, just a pretty normal reality show like Love Island meets Big Brother with an element of The Hunger Games in that there are some sponsors and gifts that are branded based on contestant behavior.
They have to share beds with someone of the opposite gender and if someone wakes up without a bedmate they are banished from the compound, so they have to partner up, and if someone is banished or chooses to leave then the others need to banish someone to keep it even. They don’t have a lot of food or a front door but they can do personal or communal tasks to be able to earn things.
This is a really fun set up, I just kept expecting something more futuristic or sci fi elements and really this read more like a reality show that just gets a bit violent at the end, nothing like The Hunger Games but they are allowed
The point of the game is just to be the last one there and then everything is provided for them, anything they would ever want, and they can stay as long as they want. It is a very strange goal and at the end you think more is going to happen than actually does. It doesn’t end with a bang, but with a sigh.
That said, this was extremely readable and I kept picking it up and tore through it to see what would happen.
Thanks to NetGalley and Random House for the ARC. Book to be published June 24, 2025.
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