If you enjoy an Adjective Noun, then this is the book for you! I’m joking, but also, I’m not.

This is a book where the narration and the character and the environment all come together so well and it is both surreal and immersive. I haven’t read much else with a tone like it, and that’s certainly something I appreciated throughout.

Ava, an engineer of boxes, and grieving mostly-lesbian, is sleepwalking through her life until a larger-than-life bro shows up at work and proceeds to sweep her off her only partially willing feet. What happens from there is workplace satire, a rom-com, thriller, and a heck of an IKEA commercial (<I>okay, I get IKEA isn’t actually supposed to come out of this unskewered, but honestly it didn’t make me want a new Hemnes dresser any less, sorrynotsorry.</I>).

The denouement was a bit much for me - it was definitely turned up to 11, so that may appeal to some. But, for me, the near-literal circus actually detracted from the emotional revelations. There were some really insidious things happening here and I felt like they deserved more interrogation than we got. That being said, no spoilers - there is a thing with a box at the end and I loved it and I laughed out loud and am still chuckling at it.

Anyway, this was a departure for me, but I really enjoyed it and give my thanks to the author, publisher, and NetGalley for an advanced reader copy in exchange for an honest review. And when Netflix inevitably makes this into a movie I will be watching it asap because it will <b>1000% percent</b> make a good one.

It's hard to sum up what exactly makes A Very Nice Box so enjoyable. It's not fun, per se, or romantic or high-concept or thrilling or lighthearted. It's sort of dry and borderline satirical, with a plot that is hard to slot into any one genre, but I was walking around my house with my Kindle glued to my face, trying to resist the urge to read out bits to my wife because I knew she'd want to read it for herself.
The protagonist of A Very Nice Box is a mostly-lesbian-but-sort-of-fluid engineer working at what is technically not IKEA but also very obviously IKEA with a different name. She comes off as a bit of an Eleanor Oliphant, focusing on her tasks with great efficiency and ignoring her coworkers as much as possible. What really brings Ava to life for me is the writing style - the book is narrated in third person, but it fits Ava and her environment and her personality so well that it might as well be first person. It's precise and observant and a little judgmental, the type of writing to make you smirk often and laugh occasionally. It reminds me a lot of Sourdough by Robin Sloane, though it is not thematically similar, and I think fans of Sourdough will be really into A Very Nice Box.
As mentioned above, the book is not really a romance or a thriller or a comedy, but has elements of each, and I think the blurred genre lines work really well. It comes off as feeling more true to life than a story that fits into, well, a box. A tragedy in Ava's past serves as a deep connecting line between all the plot elements, and it is explored in a way that feels both mindful and touching. Thematically it has a lot in common with the show Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, and I think it will appeal to those fans as well.

This book is phenomenal! A witty romcom and a thriller in one. Queer characters. Ridiculing our company culture. Necessary Self-Reviews. Weekly “Yes, And” meetings and a “neg alarm” for the words no, but and can’t. Personal color tests (are you Red, Yellow, Blue or Green?). IKEA as example. An app (SHRNK) for mental help. A dating app called KINDER. Oh and a lot of Capitals as you might have guessed by now.

Ava is a thirty-one-year old product engineer (blue colored) who divides her days in units of half an hour. One unit to shower and have breakfast, one unit to walk her dog Brutus, a lot of units for work and just a couple of units to relax. Her days are all the same and planned to the minute. Her life is completely affected by STÄDA, at work and at home. Her girlfriend Andie died in a car incident and she still griefs and only opens up a little to Jamie, a co-worker and her only friend. Then she meets Mat (yellow colored) and she falls for him. Hard.

I had some trouble reading the first pages, all those units Ava had and all those capitals for her belongings (STÄDA of course). But after a few pages I got used to them and I started to like the story more and more because it was hilarious at times. I could see myself at work with co-workers, discussing our personal colors, sighing because we had to write our own reviews and identify our own goals, correcting each other for the but or the can’t, sometimes wanting to scream: ‘I am positive BUT this is impossible AND I just CAN’T!!!’

The story is not only witty and funny but also suspenseful and a little dark at times. The witty parts are interspersed with flashbacks from the moment Andie died. I don’t want to give too much away but there are some shocking plot twists that make the story in the end more of a thriller than a funny romcom. I liked the story a lot, laughed out loud and felt Ava’s pain. I only found the revealing of Mat’s secrets a little rushed. Furthermore a great story!