eh. Really lost interest in this about halfway through, when the MC was really jiving on incel bullshit - I didn't really like any of the characters, and was just not invested. I had to switch to audiobook to finish because I couldn't hold my attention on it while reading. It took me 6 months to finish this.

I don't think I was the right reader for this. It was less of a thriller than I expected and felt too long. Unfortunately I was just anxious for it to be over.

Thank you so much to netgalley and the publisher for the arc of this one in exchange for an honest review!

Abbott is a young guy who is a Lyft driver and he’s struggling. He doesn’t know where he fits in the world and he has a strained relationship with his parents. When he is offered a huge chunk of money to transport a woman and a mystery black box across the country, he accepts and what unfolds is a wild tale.

I did enjoy this book but I had some issues with it. I’ll start with what I enjoyed. I think this book had some funny and ridiculous moments throughout and i enjoyed that. I also liked the characters and how the chapters had different point of views throughout.

I was also intrigued to finished since I wanted to know what was in the box! This book also had some good social commentary about the internet and social media.

On the other hand, this book was entirely too long. I think the social commentary, while correct, was just mentioned and repeated way too much. I think this book could’ve been shaved down a lot and it still would’ve had the same impact. I also think the story got just a bit too ridiculous at one point.

I would still recommend this book but I do wish it was a bit shorter.

I really enjoyed the dark humor of this book! What a suspenseful read that really had me wondering what was going to happen next! The writing felt very unique and it was a great change of pace.

This was so fun from start to finish. There is commentary about the state of the world and the internet community which is especially poignant today and really hit home. Lots of hilarity and lighthearted humor to break up the heaviness of this novel.

This is a remarkable take on the path that social media’s online sleuthing community has taken over the course of the past few years. As a fan of some of the greats, I was surprised by how invested I became and by how similar it is to the armchair sleuthing I see daily in my own SM apps. I’m digressing from the story but wanted to point out that this isn’t far from the truth of daily content digestion and the rabbit holes it provides.

I won’t rehash the summary but I was pleased with the dark humor, the outrageous theories, the mob mentality and the pure bedlam that ensued.

Well done, Pargin, well done!

I love an attention grabbing title.
I love an attention grabbing cover.
But most of all, I love an attention grabbing novel and this was definitely it.

This book was relatable to me in a lot of ways. It dealt with anxiety that I, like most people, suffer from. It also had great social commentary on the internet, hive mentality, etc. It was written very smart, very funny.

There were quite a few characters POVs throughout and I found them to all be engaging. Not once did I feel like I wanted to skip a certain person's story. One of the other things I really loved about this book was the aftermath tidbits that were interjected throughout, kind of giving little clues to what happens in the conclusion.

A very satisfying read and I loved how everything came together at the end.

What works in humorous fiction is highly subjective. A reader might find Douglas Adams brilliant and Carl Hiaasen unbearably cloying, or vice versa. For me, this novel from John Dies at the End author and former Cracked.com editor Jason Pargin strikes the right balance, with characters who reveal unexpected depth even in truly absurd situations—and quite a few genuine laughs. The mysterious “black box” in the title is a package the two main characters, a video game streamer/Lyft driver and a canceled beauty influencer, have been hired by a multimillionaire to discreetly transport cross-country. Internet rumormongers and would-be Reddit sleuths become convinced they’re transporting a nuclear weapon—or, perhaps, an extraterrestrial corpse. It’s an enjoyable road trip story combined with astute satirical but sympathetic takes on internet culture and its limitations, delivered by a writer with experience enough to have a nuanced take. Pargin’s Cracked roots do occasionally show in his characters’ sometimes-annoying tendency to regale each other with trivia facts and historical oddities of the kind that populated that site in its early-2000s heyday, and to otherwise revert to the Whedonesque ironic voice of that era, but it’s still a funny and even thought-provoking read.

I was enjoying this story for the most part until it took a bit of an odd term in regard to the characterization at about the 30% mark. It went downhill from there for me, unfortunately.

Fun and thought-provoking exploration of online culture, blending dark humor with a compelling plot. Recommended!

Thank you to Netgalley and the Publishing Company for this Advanced Readers Copy of I'm Starting to Worry About This Black Box of Doom by Jason Pargin!

This is a great place to start if you're newer to Pargin's works since it's a standalone and thus an easier lift for anyone unsure about delving into his series.

Lyft driver Abbott nervously accepts an offer of $200,000 cash to transport a woman named Ether across the country with a large black box. But she has a list of rules he must follow: he cannot look inside the box; he cannot ask questions about the box; he cannot tell anyone what he is doing; they must leave immediately; and he must leave all trackable devices behind. What ensues is a hilarious and timely tale about the way technology and the internet have completely overrun our lives. As the internet community speculates about what’s in the box as well as sparking rumors that this duo is preparing to launch a terror attack, the tension mounts. A variety of characters narrate the story, which works particularly well and so many thought-provoking issues are raised. I’m Starting to Worry about This Black Box of Doom will appeal to fans of quirky, unique, and creative stories and is well worth the read.

I thought the premise was intriguing so I decided to give it a try. I don't think it was a bad story or poorly written it just wasn't for me.

As a person who has frequently used Lyft and Uber, I was really intrigued by Jason Pargin's I'm Starting to Worry About This Black Box of Doom, as I have had some really bizarre rides as a passenger. This is a thriller with a side of dark humor that satirizes contemporary culture - and the ways social media has a pervasive hold on so many and perpetuates so much misinformation.

Many thanks to the author, publisher, and NetGalley for sharing this book with me.

A wild ride that somehow is both incredibly long and tedious and yet also a fascinating tahe on society and media consumption. I liked it, but good god, the endless ranting about things was so boring and I actually had to skip sections because my eyes were rolling too much.

This book reads like I’m watching a movie! I could picture every detail and I most definitely want to see it brought to the big screen !
Thank you #NetGalley and #StMartinsPress for an advanced copy in exchange for an honest review.

Published by ‎ St. Martin's Press on September 24, 2024

I’m Starting to Worry About This Black Box of Doom is both an indictment and a celebration of the internet. It’s also one of the funniest books I’ve read this year.

Abbott Coburn is an incel. Like other incels, he blames women for problems that extend beyond involuntary celibacy. Abbott has an anxiety disorder and depends on his medication to function. Even medicated, Abbott has no social skills.

Abbott lives with his father Hunter and earns money from a ride-share app by driving Hunter’s SUV. Abbott was bullied in high school and blames high school girls for the bullying because girls reward bullies with sex. Abbott has joined the hordes of young male vloggers who insist that they are victims of a conspiracy. The conspirators are either feminists or attractive women who won’t shag them, depending on the moment.

Abbott is such a dunce that he’s almost likeable. The dynamic between Abott and his father encourages the reader to feel Abbott is far from evil and not irretrievably lost to the internet’s dark side.

A woman named Ether asks Abbott for a ride across the country, from the West Coast to the East. When he explains that the app does not permit long-distance travel, she offers him a large payment of cash to work off the app, half in advance, provided he leaves behind his phone and laptop. The other hitch is that she’s transporting a large black box that might or might not display radiation decals. A mysterious employer paid Ether a large amount of cash to bring the box to his place outside of D.C.

Abbott sets aside his suspicion of women and accepts Ether’s terms because he needs cash to reboot his life. He soon realizes that Ether didn’t tell him that she’s being followed by a biker named Malort who wants to acquire the box for his own (presumably nefarious) purposes. Things get out of hand when Reddit users begin tracing Abbott and Ether on their trek, having convinced themselves that they are terrorists or heroes, no theory being too crazy to express as a certainty.

The story picks up additional characters as it bounces along, some of whom live almost entirely in the digital world. Zeke Ngata is in a wheelchair. He’s active on Reddit and a fan of Abbott’s vlog. Phil Green was a genius who lived off-grid in Canada. An anti-technology conspiracy theorist, Phil was convinced that software was rewiring human brains to turn us into zombies. Maybe he was right, but Phil is dead now, survived only by his blog. Phil had the black box when Ether first saw it, although he refused to reveal its contents.

A former FBI agent named Joan Key has a long list of problems (that’s why she’s a “former” fed). She sees the black box as an opportunity to rekindle her relationship with the FBI. Or, if she’s lucky, she’ll be near the box when it explodes, perhaps gaining postmortem recognition for her effort to avoid a catastrophe.

Key contributes to the narrative by expressing interesting opinions. She attributes school shootings and other random acts of mass violence to “aggrieved narcissism, a total inability to put personal affronts into perspective. Why shouldn’t others die for your petty humiliations, when you’re the Main Character of the Universe”? Key teams with Hunter to find Abbott before a wannabe internet hero kills him.

The characters come together in an action-adventure comedy that is driven by misunderstandings and (since people get their information from questionable internet sources) outright fabrications. The story is amusing — and sometimes laugh-out-loud funny — for multiple reasons, but my favorite is its depiction of Reddit as a haven for “mostly young males with a vast arsenal of shallow knowledge and free time.” Transcripts of Reddit conspiracy theories surrounding Abbott are hilarious. Was he taken hostage by a crazy woman? Was he abducted by aliens? Does the box in his father’s SUV contain the radioactive corpse of an alien? Is the box stuffed with the corpse of a woman who disappeared while visiting the state where Abbott lives? Is Abbott a terrorist who intends to set off a dirty bomb in Washington D.C.? Are people who post groundless conspiracy theories working for Russia or is that also a groundless conspiracy theory?

A reader might surmise that the title refers to the black box in Abbott’s SUV, but the “black box of doom” actually refers to the screens on our communication devices and the algorithms that assure our exposure to bad behavior, driving us to fear the badly behaving, who are inevitably depicted as people different from ourselves — different by race, gender, political affiliation, place of birth, or any other factor that allows us to distinguish ourselves as good people, unlike all the different kinds of people who are always causing trouble.

Abbott’s arguments with Ether about female manipulation of males are insightful in their realistic portrayal of opposing viewpoints, even if the viewpoints of both characters are easily mocked. I agree with Abbot’s view that it’s silly for women to put on a bikini and then complain that they feel objectified when they are noticed by visibly appreciative men. But it’s even sillier for Abbott to claim that he’d rather be raped than to be falsely accused of rape because rape victims get sympathy while society always condemns accused are men.

Ether wants to teach Abbott a lesson that all incels should internalize — “you can actually get over bad things that happen to you.” The story at least forces Abbott to grow up, to start making decisions for himself rather than blaming the world for his empty life.

What’s in the box? The answer, carefully set up by scenes that might quickly be forgotten in this fast-moving story, is delightful. Just know that the climax is wild and funny. Some scenes have the credibility of Road Runner cartoons, but comedy doesn’t need to be credible.

I would recommend the novel just for its goofiness and the Looney Tunes feel of its final act, but I am even more enthused about the characters’ semi-serious discussions of significant social issues: the potential impact of growing up with screen interactions rather than human touch; the incel movement that links young men with stunted social skills; and the ridiculous (and potentially dangerous) nature of the conspiracy theories that these socially challenged men devote their lives to spreading in the hope of improving their self-worth. Those are discussions that society should be having. For that reason, I'm Starting to Worry would be a good book for book clubs that actually discuss books rather than gossiping about book club members who didn't make it to the meeting.

RECOMMENDED

Very thought-provoking in a lot of ways. A wild ride with a well-fleshed out cast of characters. This was my first Pargin book although I've had a few of his others on my radar for a while. I'm looking forward to diving into some of that blacklist as this was a really pleasant experience that I would be happy to have again with other offerings. Highly recommend for any other chronically online folks like me, as well as lovers of intrigue and adventure. Must love unlikeable characters and some discussion of politics but nothing too divisive.

This book is totally bizarre, but not in a bad way. This will be a book for a very specific audience, so I will still recommend it, but it won't be for everyone. I couldn't really get invested in the story, but it will be fantastic for readers looking for something unusual and thought-provoking.