[73] The Compound by Aisling Rawle
Fiction / Psychological, green light from Knox on The Popcast?, audio

Synopsis: Lily wakes up on a remote desert compound to compete with eighteen others on a hit reality show. Contestants must outlast one another while winning challenges for luxuries and basic necessities, all under constant surveillance. As the game escalates, Lily must decide how far she’s willing to go to claim the ultimate prize.

Review: This is not fast-paced, focuses entirely on what happens at the compound (the contestants aren’t allowed to talk about their life outside of the compound, as a rule), and barely even hints at what’s going on in the real world. These characters are mostly unlikable, and not just for being so materialistic and vain. All that said, it was very engaging on audio (I bet I would have DNF’d the Kindle version), held my interest, and made me think. And an important note—while it leaned a bit Lord of the Flies, it never got too graphic or violent (I did skip the part where they killed some birds to eat though!).

Recommend? Yeah

[74] Atmosphere by Taylor Jenkins Reid
Fiction / Women, because TJR, Kindle

Synopsis: Joan Goodwin, a reserved astronomy professor, leaps at the chance to join NASA’s first class of female astronauts in 1980. As she trains alongside a diverse, driven group of candidates, Joan discovers unexpected friendship, passion, and love while preparing for her first mission.

Review: Ugh! I really wanted to like this more than I did! The love story was beautiful. The fraught relationship between Joan and her sister made me feel fired up. The writing was amazing, as you’d expect from TJR. But as a sci-fi fan, the space part of the story was just NOT doing it for me (and yes, the cover says “a love story”—so I get that was not the focus)! The plot goes back and forth between a 1984 mission gone wrong and all of Joan’s training and the suspenseful mission-gone-wrong stuff just felt ho hum. Actually, all the space stuff was disinteresting, and there was a lot in there! There is a scene where Joan is pointing out the constellations to someone and I just… didn’t care. I know the focus was on Joan discovering herself, which was a beautiful journey, but the space parts totally made me lose interest. It was a weird reading experience.

Recommend? Nah

[75] These Summer Storms by Sarah MacLean
Fiction / Women, green light from Jamies on The Popcast, audio

Synopsis: When her domineering billionaire father dies, Alice Storm reluctantly returns to the family’s private island for the funeral. She hasn’t seen or spoke to her family in five years and intends to leave immediately after. Instead, she and her siblings are forced into a week-long inheritance game of manipulative tasks designed to expose secrets, rivalries, and betrayals, all while being judged by a man Alice thought she was having a one-night stand with but turns out to work for her father.

Recommend: This is completely giving Succession vibes with a dash of effed-up romance (how could he not tell her he worked for her dad?!), so if you liked that show, you’ll like this. It’s less “rich people behaving badly” and more “rich people being entitled and insufferable.” The writing is beautiful, and it’s narrated by Julia Whelan, so I was immediately invested, and enjoyed finding out more and more details about how horrible, selfish and messed up this family is.

Recommend? Yes