“Dyson posited twelve archetypes of terrible men. If we could prove ourselves capable of turning each type of terrible man into a good man then we could, reasonably, transform any man into a good man. Proof of concept would attract attention from investors looking to finance philanthropic causes . . . Dyson’s list hardly seemed comprehensive. What about Rich Men and Predator Men and Feeble Men and Undeterrable Men and Desiring Men and Ugly Men and Pitiful Men and Boring Men and Unemployable Men and Chivalrous Men and Bellicose Men and, the worst men of all, Well-Meaning Men? But the last thing I wanted was more men at the camp. So I flattered Dyson, told him I admired his list and his vision, that he was absolutely correct, should we reform these twelve types of men then we could reform anyone, that funding would roll in by the millions. He was pleased by my assessment, and I was pleased that I made him believe me.”

Imagine you’re an influencer. You have millions of followers, a cadre of adoring fans, and one stalker. Now imagine that stalker dies, and everyone blames you. Imagine also that all around you, for reasons no one can fathom, white men have begun to form hordes of mindless zombies who swarm the community doing good deeds and not-so good deeds. Imagine that, in the middle of all this, your friend decides to start a cult, and that they need your help. Welcome to The Atmosphere.

Holy hell I loved loved loved this book. It was such a fun, funny, and sobering experience. It’s kind of like The Circle meets kind of like The Lord of the Flies meets kind of like The Grace Year meets Black Mirror. I just really can’t recommend this stunning debut novel highly enough. It’s out May 18, so hurry up and join The Atmosphere!

Usually when I say cult books I mean Manson-lite and not influencer lifestyle branding turned on its head but here we are. I really liked this story and found myself picturing it onscreen for much of the book. Maybe this is how we save America's dead malls.

This is the strange story about two best friends—a disgraced influencer and a struggling actor—who form The Atmosphere, a cult designed to reform problematic men.

I'm sure others will enjoy this topical satire about cancel culture, toxic masculinity, and more but it just wasn't for me. Sasha and her bff Dyson have created a "cult" to reform men and now they= especially Sasha- have to deal with a new set of consequences. It hits all the issues- influencers, trolls, body dysmorphia, wellness, and so on- and hits at them as well. It's clever, to be sure, you'll find situations that seem familiar from the news. Thanks to Netgalley for the ARC. No fault of McElroy that I DNF.

I'm game for a good dystopian tale, and I appreciate unlovable protagonists -- characters at which one can sneer and jeer. Check and check in Alex McElroy's The Atmospherians. I didn't enjoy the book, however.

The premise is delightfully absurd: two issue-ridden millennials who have failed -- one of them spectacularly and publicly -- decide to form a cult to help rid men of their toxic masculinity. What's not to love?

It's just that it felt uneven and disjointed, as id I had to plow through some chaff to get to the good kernels. Was it just me? Maybe so.

Thanks to NetGalley and Atria for an advance readers copy.

📚 Uh. I have no idea how to review this book. I liked it? It was horrifying? It was hyperreal, surreal, too real?
📚 I hated everyone in this book and it was great.
📚 McElroy skewers everything from influencers to tech startups to beauty culture to cults themselves - and somehow it all feels fresh. Minus a bit of a lag around the middle, I needed to know what would happen next because I didn't know what might be on the next page.
📚 Honestly though, the best dystopian fiction is the kind where you could envision it actually happening, and that is absolutely true with nearly everything that happens in THE ATMOSPHERIANS.

I can't wait to recommend this book to everyone I possibly can in just 10 short days! Creepy, funny, and with a peculiar air of mythological interest about it that I can't quite explain, I truly believe Alex McElroy has done something with this book that, I at least, have never read before.

What a great imagination combined with tongue-in-cheek ludicrousness! Alex McElroy takes the PC overload of today and envisions a world in the not too distant future. Caucasian men run in wild hordes, some doing good deeds (whether the deeds are wanted or not) and some up to no good at all.
In the midst of this is a popular influencer who preaches that you shouldn’t use any of the beauty and health products out there; no soap, lotion, conditioners, health foods, pills, etc. Sasha is riding the wave, life is great until a viewer's suicide is blamed on her. She crashes and lands in a business venture with her best childhood friend, a not-at-all stable anorexic over-thinker named Dyson.
Their lack of planning, shoot-from-the-hip logic, and constant bickering evolve into a recovery camp for white men who need to relearn all the basic rules and functions of everyday living. The hidden humor, sarcasm, and reflections on today’s slippery slope of correctness is a laugh-out-loud enjoyable work of not-too-far-fetched future fiction.
Sincere thanks to NetGalley and Atria Books for an ARC in exchange for my honest review. The publishing date was May 18, 2021.

The Atmospherians by Alex McElroy is a fascinating, thought-provoking, and sometimes laugh out loud dark satire. The story is told by Sasha, a recently disgraced and doxxed Instagram influencer who developed a huge following by espousing a beauty regimen called ABANDON, which tells followers to abandon beauty products as they’re harmful to your health and wellbeing. Her career tanks when she encourages an online troll to end his life and she becomes notoriously loathed by men’s rights activists. After living in isolation for several months, she reconnects with Dyson, her best friend in high school, who has decided to start a cult to rehabilitate toxic men and wants her to be involved. Dyson was always troubled by his relationship with his angry, controlling father. After his father dies when he is in high school, he develops dangerous habits in the desire to become thin and went to Los Angeles to pursue acting and had some success.

The idea of fixing men like his father is Dyson's motivation to start The Atmospherians. Together, Dyson and Sasha aim to help 12 men who have lost everything, their families, jobs, etc. The idea being that the men should fade into the background (Atmospherians), and let other people talk/have the limelight instead of taking all attention. Much of the book covers what happens when they bring the men to a remote farm in New Jersey for rehabilitation activities, marketed as providing job skills.

I found The Atmospherians really thought provoking as it made me question how we all impose our own beliefs, expectations, and behavior on others. How do men react when aspects of masculinity that have been ingrained in them for so long become widely rejected by society? How do we communicate and connect in a world that thrives on superficiality in lieu of deeper connections? How can we show others empathy even when their behavior is deplorable? How do we live our lives without hurting others? Can we have healthy relationships or find happiness if we weren’t exposed to them as children? How does our own narcissism feed our actions and desire for attention and flattery? I found this to be a very engrossing read and some parts are just so funny and clever.

Thank you Atria Books and NetGalley for providing this ARC.

I requested to read this because it sounded like it would be a witty, satirical read. I think it's hard to tackle the things McElroy has because he’s included such a wide scope of issues. It can be even harder to write it, even if it seems extreme, and have it make a sort of sense. What Sasha went through was beyond extreme, and that nurtures the entire point of the novel.

It was hard to like either Sasha or Dyson, which feels purposeful and done well. That the men follow Dyson’s ridiculous rituals makes it that much more amusing. There is so much going on, so many extreme or bizarre threads of activity, that it can seem chaotic but is carefully purposeful. It comes together for an amusing read. Thank you, Atria Books, for sending this along.

I was looking forward to this debut novel, but didn't enjoy the writing style at all. I found it to be too flowery.

Unfortunately, this book just wasn't for me. I tried to finish it. I got to about 60% but I couldn't finish it. I couldn't really get invested into any of the characters or the plot. DNF.

With an inviting and timely premise, The Atmospherians by Alex McElroy is a satirical look at influencer culture and how it intersects with themes of gender and politics. While I appreciated McElroy’s writing style and their attempts to deal with such nuanced, complicated themes, I was ultimately underwhelmed and came away not quite understanding what they were trying to accomplish through writing this novel. Thematically, the book will fit in well with this year’s releases Fake Accounts by Lauren Oyler and No One Is Talking About This by Patricia Lockwood, but will not measure up favorably in comparison.

The Atmospherians follows Sasha Marcus, an Instagram wellness influencer who is “cancelled” following an encounter with a male follower on her social media page. Cast out of elite culture circles, Sasha reconnects with an old high school buddy, Dyson, who convinces Sasha to start a cult (they literally call it that at the offset) for wayward men to rehabilitate them to rejoin society. Men in this heightened version of reality are at risk of joining “man hordes,” which are at best groups of mansplainers and at worst violent cabals of men’s right activists. In creating “The Atmosphere,” Sasha and Dyson seek to prevent their cult of men from joining hordes and to become symbols for what healthy masculinity can be in modern society.

McElroy’s voice is quite funny and charming, and I can imagine that they have a good book of personal essays in their future. Some of their observations are also astute. McElroy is absolutely correct that the internet acts as a platform for individuals whom would otherwise have no way of connecting with one another and probably shouldn’t connect with one another. The man hordes are a representation of incels (the involuntary celibate, for those who are not incredibly online), and Sasha’s social media influencer tech friends are facsimiles for very real influencers that you can find clucking about on your Instagram feed. The problem is that The Atmospherians doesn’t seem to have much to say beyond “these things are bad,” and when it moves to say more, the message is messy and muddled.

I am intrigued to see what McElroy does in the future, and there will clearly be an audience for The Atmospherians. McElroy seems to have their fingers on the pulse for this generation of self-promotion social media mavens, and I’m sure the book will be a hit on Twitter. I can already envision the tweets of shallow self-reflection pointing out how accurate this book is without any realization that we are complicit in this culture every time we clack-clack-clack on the keyboard.

Wow! I don’t know what else to say about this book but wow. It follows two friends who start a cult and leaves you hanging by the edge of your seat the entire time. I couldn’t put it down. This story left me confused, hopeful, tearful, happy and all the emotions as the book went on. I enjoyed it

When I say this book involves a cult created to rid men of their toxic masculinity, some of you might applaud that and some of you might feel a heated need to come to the defense of one gender. The latter group might think this is a book of man bashing. Hear me out for a moment: Yes, the author highlights some unsavory male behaviors, but they also look at the root of those behaviors. They closely examine childhood environments and social contributions, acknowledging the external factors that lead to such behaviors. They look at the toxic effects of society on women, as well. I felt the actual attack was on all of the societal norms we’ve allowed to influence our thinking and behavior.

The Atmosphere is a therapeutic environment for males (Atmospherians), founded by a failed actor who proudly proclaims it to be a cult long before anyone else can. Dyson, the fearless leader, invites his disgraced influencer friend to help him with this new program and what ensues is a strong satirical story that will make you wonder if society is, indeed, our charismatic leader, influencing us in ways we barely recognize.

Alex McElroy brilliantly tackled a fascinating concept through a hyperbolic setting, yet its ridiculousness makes you realize how absurd so much of what we unwittingly allow to control us really is. They managed to make me question whether or not I should write this review, telling all of you that you should read this book!

But, you should.

It’s an eye-opening dark comedy that highlights how dependent we can be on an external definition of who we are. I wonder now - how many things are cultish in nature, even though we never refer to them as cults? Because cults are intrinsically bad, right? I’m telling you, there is so much to unpack with this one and my head is still spinning!

I love books like this, with a deeper meaning that has me constantly jotting down thoughts. This read was the exact mental stimulation I’d been craving, which suggests I should have tacked five stars onto this review. It was close to perfect. Unfortunately, although it started out as a propulsive narrative, there were times when the novel lost its footing. McElroy brought me back into it all regularly, but I can’t disregard the moments they lost me.

If you’re looking for a read that entertains with its hilarity and darkness while making you pause to reflect, The Atmospherians is absolutely one to add to your list. I’m still in awe of all that McElroy managed to communicate in a book that barely exceeds 300 pages. I will be thinking about the message for a long time.

I am immensely grateful to Atria Books and NetGalley for my digital review copy. All opinions are my own.

A bold and witty story about purging the world of toxic masculinity. It's an original read bordering on satire. Thank you to NetGalley for the advance review copy.

Have you ever wanted the opportunity to get in on the ground floor of a cult? No? Neither did disgraced influencer, Sasha Marcus. After her world being turned upside down by a comment, and an eviction, Sasha finds it difficult to say no when her childhood friend, Dyson asks her to leave the city with him. When she finds out where they are going, Sasha is unnerved but has no where else to go. Can anything good come out of a cult?
The Atmospherians by Alex McElroy was a very interesting read. There was not one character that I liked or related to but I couldn’t stop reading. The unique premise is what caught my attention. McElroy introduces the idea of “man hordes” and it was very scary but took this story to the next level. I would have preferred a less ambiguous ending but that just my preference. Over all, this was a book I would recommend, especially if you like books that are very edgy.

Sasha, a social media influencer, has fallen from grace after being blame for an online troll's suicide. Rescued from protestors and death threats by her life-long friend, the two decide to start a cult with the hopes of washing the world from toxic masculinity.

The blurb of this book really intrigued me. It is definitely outside of my normal reading scope, but I was excited to give it a try. Unfortunately, I don't think I was the target audience for this book. The book was hard to follow at times and left me confused. I think for the right audience, this is going to be a great book, but I was not a fan.

Thank you to Atria and NetGalley for the gifted copy. All opinions are my own.

An ambitious and funny story about cults, masculinity, human connection, and the diaphanous evaporation of it all in the age of social media.

This was a super satire-heavy story about getting rid of masculinity that is toxic in the world. I think there were some really thought-provoking moments in the book that readers will really latch onto and enjoy! There are portions though, that felt really slow-paced for me. I enjoyed the social commentary and the characters!