Breakaway Books

Authored by Aisling Rawle; Published June 2025; Science Fiction

⭐️⭐️⭐️ / 🏖️

If you have ever turned on prime time television and thought, “Wow, society has really gone down the tubes,” The Compound will not help you change your opinion. Its depiction of reality TV is just disturbing enough—and just close enough to reality—to give me the chills.

In The Compound, the beautiful but slightly ditzy Lily wakes up in a reality TV show in a dystopian future. Every night, she must sleep in a bed with a male contestant in order to stay on the show, while all the competitors must complete communal and individual tasks to earn goods for the compound in which they live. The compound, located in the middle of the desert, is barren at best, and at times seems designed to kill the contestants through thirst and starvation. As the group is whittled down, Lily becomes more and more desperate to win the competition and earn the riches that achievement entails.

This novel is yet another experience that feels like watching a slow-motion train wreck. I had a pit in my stomach most of the time that I read it, dreading just how barbaric the actions of the contestants would become. There is a certain Lord of the Flies vibe to it, with the contestants trying to organize and govern themselves to meet their communal goals and ultimately being ruled by those who possess the most brute strength. It’s enough to make a small woman like me shudder. If that likeness isn’t disturbing enough, I couldn’t help but note similarity after similarity to popular reality shows that exist right now. I’m not a huge fan of The Bachelor franchise, but I know enough to see the features borrowed from the show (and many, many others like it) for this novel. I was left to think deeply about both the commercialism and brutality behind today’s most popular entertainment and ponder how many years we really are from producing a show like the one featured in this novel.

To say I enjoyed this novel, though, would be a stretch. I found Lily to be absolutely vapid, obsessed with material gain, and annoying to listen to as the narrator. I was continually frustrated by the lack of detail on the time period in which the novel takes place, with only vague references to ongoing wars and resource scarcity. The most likable contestants are quickly evicted from the compound, and I didn’t really “ship” (or like) any of the romantic couples on the show, so I couldn’t really root for any of the contestants to win. I’m already turned off by the features of dating reality shows—the focus on physical attractiveness and the thinly veiled desire for fame—so reading a story with these values turned up to 11 wasn’t terribly enjoyable. 

The Compound might turn you off of reality TV for good, but it still may be worth a read if you’re worried where that type of entertainment will take us.