Cover Image: Suicide Club

Suicide Club

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Member Reviews

I read this so fast and all while on a vacation full of activities. Honestly, the journey was more fun than the destination. When it was over, I was also over it. I suppose that is fitting, as I would not want to live in this future. The world is well draw and frightening. I enjoyed the flawed main characters and the suspicious men in their lives.

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First off, I seriously loved the concept behind this story. Secondly, I loved the execution. It’s a very well written dystopian; if you could live forever, would you? And also what cost? I just devoured this book!

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Very interesting take on the near future and the topic of assisted suicide.. The characters very well written and the story was intriguing.. Rachel Heng is a great storyteller.

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This book was so good! I loved the characters, I loved the way the story unfolded. This was such an original idea and it was told with so much love.

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This book seemed to have a slow start and I had trouble connecting with the characters early on; however, I persisted. As a physician, I got very involved in the ideas the author presented of medically- and genetically-induced immortality and the disparity it produced in the population. Overall, I liked it in the end.

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The nearly disaffected tone & technology obsession of Touch mixes with the classist overtones as The Thousandth Floor, in a world where population growth & fertility are low but the chosen are living 150+ years with the expectation that immortals will become reality soon.

On the outskirts of the cities jam-packed with wealthy & regimented lifers, are the uncared for sub-100’s, those poor souls whose lottery numbers assigned at birth are too low to warrant the extreme measures & replacements promised to the lifers. Due to the sagging population growth suicides are absolutely forbidden and potential victims are monitored closely.

The MC Lea is shocked on the street when she sees her aging father after 88 years and mistakenly steps in front of traffic and her accident is assumed to be a suicide attempt. In her “treatment” group she meets Anja, who is soon to accept the reigns of a secret activist group trying to help the anti-life-loving population end their lives on their own terms.

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Ugh, this is terrible. I'm behind in my reviews and am writing this two months after I read it, and mostly what I can tell you now is that it clearly didn't leave that much of an impression on me. I remember expecting so much more in terms of big ideas to chew on. It's a pretty good story with pretty good writing, but I wanted a lot more from it. I'd still give Heng another try, however.

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This premise is such a fascinating one and makes an incredible story. It also raises some provocative question about the human race, life, death and immortality. I always love it when an author is clever and creative enough to incorporate deeper topics into the narrative. I appreciate that sort of storyline - the ones that allow the exploration of big questions.

"Suicide Club" is a science fiction novel that is set in near-future USA. The population is in decline so to combat this people are strongly encouraged to live a super-healthy lifestyle and to get various different body enhancements and replacements.

Interesting and fabulous read!

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I found this book to be thought provoking. It poses the question, would you want to live for almost 200 years? Technology has advanced and our bodies can be surgically updated.
I enjoyed the characters , 2 young women with very different lifestyles who end up meeting in a “recovery” group for those going against the grain of thought in society.
My criticism for this book is that it was a bit short, I would have liked to see more of how this lifestyle would effect people and our world.
An interesting and fairly quick read that I would recommend to Dystopian fans.

Thank you Netgalley for an ARC copy of this book I’m exchange for an honest review .

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The more distance I have from this book, the more I feel disappointed by it. The premise is interesting enough, if not a little obvious - in this futuristic NYC, the world is run by medicinal/pharmaceutical companies, who with the resources of the government seem to completely control who gets access to what thereby impacting life quality and expectancy. Lea, our primary main character, is on the surface the perfect candidate for the incoming wave of immortals until she gets in an accident that more or less ends with her being on suicide watch. As she tries to prove her innocence, she is forced to go to group therapy and worlds collide with our other POV, Anja.

This is a pretty standard dystopian, and the way Lea has so many thoughts on people's outward appearances of youth and beauty gave me some flashbacks to Uglies . The lyrical nature of the writing did elevate it in some places, but when I took a moment to think about what actually was being presented to me, things get dicey.

If the name wasn't obvious enough, there are some heavy content warnings for graphic suicide and self-harm, which are a large component of the story. Lea's character also has some pretty psychopathic tendencies, and there are mentions to two explicit flashback scenes where she beats a fellow schoolmate nearly to death and another where she mutilates the class bunny. (And for those of you wondering, no I am not going to put this in spoilers because I understand these can be very triggering topics.) Most upsetting to me, was the rape she commits on-page that is glossed over almost instantly. Unfortunately, though Lea's actions paint her very clearly as Not A Good Person, she is never presented with anything other than sympathy. I thought for a while we would be getting an antihero perspective from her, but alas, it never got that far.

I went into this story open-minded, but between the characterizations and a plot that I failed to connect with, Suicide Club was ultimately a let down.

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This book came very close to being good, but never quite got there. I enjoyed the premise and its promise, but felt it was incomplete. The characters didn't stay with me and I felt it dragging towards the end.

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Welcome to the world of the Suicide Club, where a genetic lottery determines how long you will live, and if you will become a lifer, a person with the potential to live forever. With immortality on the horizon, lifer Lea, like the majority of humanity is super health-obsessed, only doing low-impact workouts and forsaking all meat and alcohol. But in a world where the cake is a lie, who wants to live forever? Enter the Suicide Club, a group taking life, and death, into their own hands.

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This book had beautiful imagery and I loved he way that this near-future New York was imagined and laid out, the kind of technologies we would have, the way that life would be. It's all identified and magnified in this book, drawn out to epic proportions that border on satire in the imagery of what humans look like a how our bodies regenerate and how technology has changed an evolved to the point that immortality is a clear possibility, But there were some stretches of the imagination that I was not prepared to make - like, medical school now takes 4 decades to complete, and corporate ladder climbing in this new world could take 100 years or so.

More importantly, the story line of Anja and Lea didn't hold my attention; they were flat and didn't rise to the challenge that this world poses of them, to be as vibrant and interesting as it is. These women were boring, and the writing was more focused on fluff and purple prose than on building characters that I would care to read about. Entire passages of narration went nowhere, as if Heng just got a kick out of seeing herself write flowery exposition. It wasn't enough to carry this book. The idea of this new world was much better than the execution of the actual story, which turned it into an average read. 3 stars

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If you could live forever, would you? "Suicide Club" is a book set in the future where life can go on forever. Lea is considered a "Lifer" which means that she has a potential to live forever. She is the ideal Lifer until one day when she sees a man who looks like her dad and then everything changes. Lea is introduced to a club, a suicide club. The club's members have no plans to live forever so the club has to be hidden. But why would you want to end your life when you have a chance to live forever? Read the book and find out why. Read how the author writes such a unique and poetic book that is meant for every age group.

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This book was SO interesting. It really gave you insight into what our world could be. The relationships between the characters and all the mystery going on with the Observers and WeCovert, really kept my mind wondering. I would definitely recommend this book, whether it’s your typical genre or not.

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Modern medicine is making advances all the time, certainly not quickly enough for some, but at a much faster rate than in previous generations. What will that mean in the next few hundred years? How close can we get to curing everything? Could immortality be possible and if so, would we want it to be?

These are the questions posed in Rachel Heng's Suicide Club which introduces us to Lea and Anja, two "lifers" in the midst of their own individual struggles with the system and regulations of mortality. In a world in which the birthrate has dropped significantly, life extensions have become available in order to maintain human existence. At birth a child is tested and the results indicate how long they are likely to live. If the child is a "lifer", someone expected to live far beyond the average lifespan, they are given treatments to maintain and supplement their health. As the book begins, Lea is celebrating her 100th birthday though it looks quite different to any 100th birthday celebration I have ever seen. Lea is in the prime of her life (three hundred was now the number to beat) and her career. She is of the utmost health and is expecting any day to be invited to join the Third Wave, a set of life extensions that could lead to absolute immortality.

Anja is in quite a different position. She has all the advantages of being a "lifer", and in this society they are many, but her mother does not. Having obtained certain procedures and medical devices on the black market, Anja's mother's health has begun to fail beyond help, legal or otherwise. Unfortunately, the mechanical heart and other treatments she has prevent her from actually dying and she is stuck in a horrific limbo between alive and dead. Anja wants to help her, but how to do so when the choice to live or die isn't in the hands of the individual? And so we are introduced to Suicide Club, a group of activists intent on changing the mind of society about what it now means to be either pro-life or pro-choice.

The concept of this book was fascinating and so much of it was so good, but at times the plot seemed to lose direction a bit. The science fiction elements, however, were on point. The details from the types of treatments available to the health recommendations for longer life were well thought. Everyone lives to live longer. Gone are most of the foods and even many of the activities we regularly partake of now. No more meat, absolutely no sugar, veg only and even that isn't all recommended. Lea agonizes over a carrot at the market, hoping that since it will be shared by two people it won't be too indulgent. She leaves the grapefruit behind and plans to come back for one for her next Special Occasion. I'm all for eating healthy, but when a grapefruit and a carrot are too indulgent, how much LIFE is left?
Music is too stressful and has been replaced by relaxing Muzak; running wears out joints, but Pilates is still okay if performed carefully, but Swimlates was better.

This book was interesting and made me think about where my health may some day lead me. It also leads the reader to ponder how much control we actually have over our own lives, how much choice is really available to us. I didn't love this book, but I liked it really well.

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My favorite science fiction is the kind that starts with trends that are happening now and then stretches them into the future in ways that are both plausible and ridiculous. Suicide Club is exactly that. It takes place in New York City roughly 300 years into the future where our obsession with healthy lifestyle trends has become the organizing principle of society. The all-abiding “Sanctity of Life Act” makes life all about longevity and nothing about living.

Lea Kimino is a successful, young hundred-year-old, a perfect physical specimen with a great job and benefits until the day she sees her long-lost, fugitive father and chases after him, stepping into traffic. This indicates she is not sufficiently concerned about her life, especially since she won’t explain, so they send her off to We-Covery and a couple federal agents monitor her at work and home, speaking to colleagues and even her boyfriend to investigate her antisanct activities.

Anja is another lifer–the people whose natal genetic test qualified them for a lifetime of longevity enhancements like self-healing skin, all trademarked to hilarious effect. She and her famed opera singer mother immigrated from Sweden so her mother could pursue the more aggressive American search for immortality. Of course, that meant that their musical careers suffered because the greatest enemy in this new America is cortisol, which meant avoiding emotional stimulation such as enjoying music. In fact, everything that makes life enjoyable seems to be bad for the constant equanimity of living forever.

They meet in We-Covery and both of them have important decisions to make about their parents. Lea’s father wants to die and Anja’s mother is mostly dead, except for a few enhanced body parts that won’t shut down. Meanwhile, the Suicide Club is broadcasting videos of lifers committing quite horrific suicides, their dramatic methods needed to overcome all the immortalizing technologies preserving their bodies.



I loved Suicide Club. It is such a clever idea and a beautiful send-up of the glut of self-help and diet crazes. It also poses the essential question, is living a long time more important than really living? The store cash register than adds up your RDA of nutrients, fat, carbs, salt, etc cracked me up. The whole birthday cake that is made for cutting, not eating, all of the satiric hilarity is a necessary balance to the gruesome realities of immortality.

I received an e-galley of Suicide Club from the publisher through NetGalley.

Suicide Club at Henry Holt & Co. | Macmillan
Rachel Heng author site


★★★★

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I thoroughly enjoyed this book. The idea of having the chance to live forever was very interesting. The characters were very well developed. I would definitely share this book with a friend or read it again!

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Well, the cover of this book is beautiful.

The story and execution however.......

In the near future, humans are encouraged to live a super healthy lifestyle and to indulge in body modifications - enhancements and replacements. This creates humans who are able to live...almost forever. So, see...the concept is fabulous.

Suicide Club follows the lives of two women, Lea - a lifer, and Anja - a woman's who's mother is dying. Lea is 100 years old, a high-level executive in New York - and she runs into her father, 88 years after last seeing him. Lea creates the "Suicide Club' - which advocates for the right for everyone to live and die on their own terms.

The writing is okay, the characters are annoying. That being said, I think that Rachel Heng is a talented writer and I look forward to whatever she comes up with next.

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A mindless summer read--the plot and writing style were fine, but there was a lack of emotional depth and the pacing was kind of choppy.

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