"The Compound" essentially tells the story of characters on a fictional reality tv show set in the near distant future. Expect similar components as you would find if you were actually watching a reality tv show play out on the screen--lots of drama, scheming, pettiness, etc. I found it to be very readable and entertaining, but I would have loved just a little bit more information on what was happening outside of The Compound, that aspect of the plot was very vague. Overall, a fun, quick, entertaining, summer read!

I really appreciate the free early copy of this book and while the premise did keep me interested I felt that it left me wanting more. It was easy to get invested in the characters even if they were unlikable but there was a lot of buildup to an anticlimactic ending. I wanted to know more about the wars and life outside of the compound that led the characters to choose that option. An interesting concept and I do look forward to this author’s next work.

This really is Love Island meets the Hunger Games and if that combo intrigues you, you’re not alone. I enjoyed reading this one but generally thought the premise was more interesting than the execution. I read to know what happened (which was interesting and definitely paralleled The Hunger Games) but I didn’t get a larger point or message other than some commentary on consumerism. Still an interesting read if you are looking for something a little different but still summer vibes! Thanks to NetGalley for a copy of the book in exchange for my review.

The Compound by Aisling Rawle is a great novel of how people who are lonely and unsatisfied with their current life will go to great depths to make their world more enjoyable. The plot is that 10 women and 10 men, who are part of a reality show, are brought to a compound outside the desert where they will compete for rewards for themselves and for the group. The stipulation is that the women and men must be a couple and those who are without a mate are banished from the compound. The living conditions are sparse along with the food/drink until the group start performing the task that are sent to them daily along with personal task which give the contestant prizes of luxury. The group starts to unravel quickly , turning on each other and we see how far people are willing to do to maintain their status. I enjoyed the book very much and was drawn to the comparison of The Hunger Games meets Love Island. This would have been a 5 star for me but the ending did not bring closure for me.

This was such a buzzy debut! It was the best mock-reality show since Big Brother in the early 2000s - would make an incredible on-screen series. It wasn't a perfect five stars for me just because I felt that some of the middle section dragged and got repetitive. I know the ending has been controversial but I actually really liked it. The characters felt real and flawed and I was rooting for our main girl to make it to the end. I just had fun with this one, it felt like a guilty pleasure. Definitely an author to watch for!

The idea of this book had me all excited to read it. The premise was original and the opening scene had me intrigued and hooked. However I struggled throughout the book with staying interested. I tried in both physical and audio form and both forms were not for me. It was too slow moving and not enough happened and I remained bored most of the book.

Thank you to Random House for my copy of THE COMPOUND.

I really enjoyed this book and these characters will definitely stick with me. I loved the premise and I know this would make an excellent movie or tv series. Its a very cool look inside a strange reality show life and I'm excited for more from Aisling Rawle.

I’ve seen so many negative reactions to THE COMPOUND, which, whatever, everyone likes different things, but regardless of whether it’s “likable,” I think this book is being criminally overlooked from a craft perspective. It’s a book club book. A discussion book. A book about a TV show that should be its own TV show.

I can understand why it might be off-putting. The voice of the narrator, Lily, is flat and unaffected. She is vapid to a degree that turns the stomach. But this is what’s so remarkable about THE COMPOUND. It’s obviously dystopian. The tone is ominous, with a creeping sense of dread from page one. But you’d never know that from Lily’s observations alone. For the entirety of the book, she exhibits zero anger toward the producers of the show she’s on. In fact, she’s not even curious about them. She gives very little information about how the world got this way (whatever “this way” is, because we don’t learn much about that, either). Lily has all of the information we need to answer the questions that come up in this book… but she doesn’t give it to us. Instead, we get to read a story about the things that do matter to Lily, while all the things that don’t stack up, one by one, to tell a story of their own.

Do I think everyone should read this? Well, no. To enjoy THE COMPOUND you probably need to have enjoyed high school English class, at least a little. It’s been a long time since I’ve read a book with this much attention to tone and character, written by someone who understands the difference and can execute on both at the same time. Oh man. Books like this are why I love reading. I could talk about this all day, but everything I have left to say is a spoiler.

PICK THIS FOR YOUR BOOK CLUB.

Thank you to NetGalley and Random House for the opportunity to read this book in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own.

this was FUN. it made me remember why i love to read. genuinely such a unique concept i am obsessed. i have seen people complain about the ending but i think it works. i honestly could talk a lot about this book and i think people saying it missed the mark don’t get it. that’s the POINT!!!!!! i honestly might have to get the book trophy of this

The Compound is such a unique and gripping read! This reads like a mashup between The Hunger Games and The Lord of the Flies... Singles are thrown together on a remote island and must couple up to stay on the reality show while completing Survivor-like tasks. Go in blind and enjoy the "games." Kudos to the beautiful cover art!

Thank you to Random House Publishing Group - Random House and NetGalley for this ARC.

I thought I’d love this one due to its popularity and the fact it’s based on reality tv (guilty pleasure!!)

It’s kinda scifi ish, not too far into the future, and ultimately depressing… but it feels like that is where we are heading anyway.

I didn’t like the characters, which made it hard for me to keep going. Around halfway through I started finding the book slow and that plus not liking the characters made it difficult… and I was unimpressed with the ending.

Thank you to Random House and NetGalley for an early copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

This was phenomenal. The publisher comps are perfect -- Love Island meets Lord of the Flies. It's exactly that. As a huge Love Island fan, I was thrilled with this sinister take on reality television in a not-so-distant reality where everything is tinged with desperation and nihilism. I loved living inside the head of our protagonist, Lily, who was confounding at times and delightfully surprising at others. It's a slightly bleak, sinister novel, but I was thrilled by the undercurrent of unease that found its way into everything.

5 stars.

Okay so I definitely slept on this book for far too long and now that I’ve read it, I truly wish I had read it sooner! It was a lot of fun—weird fun, but definitely a good read! I’m a big reality TV fan and this gave me that same vibe I get with watching reality TV. Fantastic read!

The Love Island meets Lord of the Flies was spot on marketing.

I had fun with this one! It also gives some thought provoking scenarios of the human mind and forces the reader into some potential uncomfortable feelings about themselves.

Idk why I expected this to be a sort of murder mystery/thriller but that it is not. Well not exactly anyway. It got unhinged and remained unhinged!

The Compound is a darkly intriguing blend of reality TV satire and psychological drama, with its high-stakes desert setting and unnerving character dynamics keeping the pages turning. Yet its momentum falters in parts, leaving secondary characters underdeveloped and the broader world-building murky - making it thought-provoking, but not quite fully convincing.

I don't even know where to begin with reviewing this book after the whirlwind it took me on. The setting itself for this book is such a mysterious entity in itself, from the more obvious sinister nature of the invisible show producers and their influence on the outcome of what goes on in the house to the even more mysterious backdrop of the outside world the tenants are desperately trying to keep at bay. It's more than just the dangers of living in the desert, the extreme temperatures and the predators that lurk beyond, but the actual nature of society that the tenants think they are escaping. This world seems to be a slightly more intense version of our own, perhaps even one in our near future, with mention of war and natural disaster and yet the need for superficial items, like beauty supplies, high-end brands, and digital entertainment.

This setting allows for the existence of our unlikeable main character, Lily, who expresses her lack of desire to work, her ineptitude for many tasks, and her obsession with appearances. From the start, Lily compares herself to the other women of the compound, speaking as harshly of herself as she does the others. When the men arrive and they are assigned the task to rank each other's attractiveness, Lily cannot stop thinking about the results, even though she ranked highly. As the story goes on, we see more and more how Lily values pricy, material rewards over anything practical, and the paradox she lives by trying to curate how everyone perceives her, even as the show producers force her to make a fool of herself for more and more material rewards.

What makes this novel so good is the way it holds a giant mirror in front of us and forces us to confront several harsh realities. Lily may be unlikeable, but she is also incredibly similar to ourselves. Our society pumps out fast fashion, reality shows, microtrends, and it all comes back to pushing the desire for more, more, more. Lily is never truly happy. When she received a gold necklace, she still wants diamond earrings. When she achieves one person's attention with her appearance, she chastises herself for not being clever enough to win another man's attention. Even when she finally has Sam and the chance to be with him, she cannot be happy returning to her old life so soon, and she tells herself he would never love her outside of the compound anyway.

I am still trying to piece together all of my thoughts, but several things stick out to me the most. Firstly, after all of the events in the compound that lead up to Lily being in the house alone, when she finally gets a moment to speak to her mother, one of her only questions about what's going on outside the compound (that is unrelated to her family) is to ask if people like her. Throughout her time in the compound, Lily is constantly thinking about how she is being portrayed to the audience, something that must be on all the tenant's minds. However, at this point in the story Lily has lived through uncomfortable hunger levels, experienced dehydration that brought her fellow tenants close to death, watched Becca leave following extreme injury, fought Tom (including a near-attack by coyote and ultimately blinding him with bleach), and watched Andrew lose his grip on reality to the point of injuring himself. She does not ask if anyone knows how these tenants are after leaving the compound (particularly Tom, who was absolutely awful but it seems jarring for Lily to have no remorse over blinding him) but is instead still worried about her image over anything else.

It is also alarming how long Lily chooses to stay, given everything she has been through in the compound. To some extent, it could be seen as her trying to squeeze every drop of benefit from the experience given all that it has taken from her, causing her to stay long enough to demand a long list of luxuries and gather more viewership for staying in the compound alone. However, as Sam said before leaving, her stay is only worth it if she takes more than the show takes from her - can Lily still feel that way when her stay in the compound resulted in her betraying so many people around her? If so, what does that say about Lily? Even in her final moments in the compound, she requests a large sled so she can carry all of her winnings, completely unwilling to let them go no matter what. We see Lily valuing all things material up to the very, very end.

But given the nature of the show, Lily could choose to stay much, much longer and it seems no one would stop her. If she really wanted to avoid going back to her dead-end job, the natural disasters, the war that has disappeared her father, she could remain in the compound, but at the end of it all, she still chooses to leave because there are so many experiences outside of those walls that she wants to have. Again, this holds up a mirror to ourselves. Those of us fighting against the things going on in our current world, those of us who are disgusted by so many actions being taken around us, those of us that claim we just want to be able to escape from it all - would we? If we were in Lily's position, would we also choose to come back? Probably.

This is a long way of saying - wow. I read this book in under 24 hours because I was obsessed from the start. I could not believe some of the twists, and I was delightfully disgusted with most of the characters. I felt that this novel had a lot of important commentaries to make about our world, and I feel that it deserves so much more hype than I've been seeing.

Lots going on, fast paced and kept me entertained. It wasn't life changing, but it was a good escape and mental break. I really enjoyed it!

Enjoyed this read. It’s a dystopian Love Island with a bit of Hunger Games. The helpful items reminded me a bit of Dungeon Crawler Carl too. Fun plot and crazy characters. Easy to read and enjoyable.

I'm not a reality TV fan but this worked for me! I do think it gave Lord of the Flies vibes because there is something not quite right about the setting: the compound. I found the main character's POV to be clever because she wasn't the brightest gal out there and she was very naive, allowing for us as readers to know very little about the compound...

This was such a compulsive read because I could not figure out what was wrong with the situation, nor could I predict what was going to happen. This is the perfect summer read and I totally recommend it for reality TV lovers.

When Big Brother meets influencer culture, you get The Compound. A strong exploration of what our society expects from reality tv, its stars, and the blue we place on material things.