What's Scary is that I Finished It

 

TITLE: The Compound

AUTHOR: Aisling Rawle

PUBLISHER: Random House

PUBLISHING DATE: June 24, 2025

PAGES: 292   

SOURCE: Library 

FROM GOODREADS: Lily—a bored, beautiful twentysomething—wakes up on a remote desert compound alongside nineteen other contestants on a popular reality TV show. To win, she must outlast her housemates while competing in challenges for luxury rewards, such as champagne and lipstick, and communal necessities to outfit their new home, like food, appliances, and a front door. 

The cameras are catching all her angles, good and bad, but Lily has no desire to leave: Why would she, when the world outside is falling apart? As the competition intensifies, intimacy between the players deepens, and it becomes increasingly difficult to distinguish between desire and desperation. When the producers raise the stakes, forcing contestants into upsetting, even dangerous situations, the line between playing the game and surviving it begins to blur. If Lily makes it to the end, she'll receive prizes beyond her wildest dreams—but what will she have to do to win? 

Addictive and prescient, The Compound is an explosive debut from a major new voice in fiction and will linger in your mind long after the game ends.

MY THOUGHTS: I've seen people talking a lot about this on Booktube and a few other places, so when I saw it on the "New Release" shelf at my local library, I figured I would take a chance.  While I didn't exactly dislike it, it seemed to take forever for me to read such a short book, and it really just reminded me why I don't watch a lot of reality TV.

Lily and 19 other contestants (10 females, 9 males) are participating in a big-brother type game being broadcast across a world filled with desperation and despair.  Apparently, there are wars going on and Earth has become an apocalyptic type of environment.  More about that later. They are competing in individual and community tasks to earn things which will make the home they are staying in more livable and enjoyable, and to earn personal items which will enhance their living experience and possibly earn them influencer status when they leave. In this show, you not only can get voted out of the house, but if you end up sleeping alone at night, when you wake up, you must leave.  This element alone added more vanity to the book than I ever wanted.

One by one people start to form little cliques, and then one by one, they start turning on each other.  The girls are vying for the boys' attention, and the boys are trying to show how "manly" they all are.  As you would guess, there are some real jerks who eventually start showing their true colors and some who are taking the game VERY seriously.  

I thought I might have difficulty keeping track of all the characters, but they whittled down pretty quickly, and it wasn't too hard - a lot of them were basically the same person in a different body. Although we learn quite a bit about a select few, Lily is probably the MC and, in my opinion, didn't add much to the story except being a tool to tell the plot through.  And honestly, my biggest gripe was probably that I wanted to know more about the terrible world that had evolved.  What were the wars over?  How bad was it really outside the compound?  How many people were dying and why was the compound such a fun thing for people to watch on TV while war raged on and people died?

I can see people who really enjoy competition reality shows really loving this book.  I found it well-written and will definitely pick up another book by this author.  I just don't think this is the best subject matter for me and it was sold to me as more of a horror novel when in fact, it is everything but.

MY RATING: 3 PAWS