I set my eyes on The Compund after my book circle friend S added it to her TBR on pagebound. It was the Goodreads choice award winner last year in the category Readers’ Favorite Science Fiction. It is promoted as Love Island meets The Hunger Games and I knew nothing more going in.

The Compound – Aisling Rawle
Original publication year: 2025

Elevator pitch: A girl compete in a reality show where they do tasks in exchange for things.

I think it was good to know as little as I did going in. Not knowing in which direction the story was going to go was quite intriguing. The contenders of the show is prohibited from talking to each other about their personal life and therefore we don’t get to know a lot about the world outside the compound except for glimpses here and there. Not knowing their history suited me fine, because I usually find that a little boring.

I haven’t seen Love Island but based on the comments on Pagebound, there are many similarities and you can see where the inspiration came from. Does it make me a little curious of the show? Yes, but I don’t think it’ll be nearly as exciting as this one so I think I’ll pass.

I liked that we actually got a competition. I’ve read far too many books where we are promised a competition but it’s really just a front for a love story and the competition just slips away after a few chapters and we hardly get any competing done. I liked that this really was a competition.

This is a very materialistic world and I think we are ment to think about how far a person is willing to go in exchange for nice things. How is it in the real world? In which way are we heading? The author was successful in making the reader think. The first part of the story was addicting, very easy to continue to see where we were headed.

I liked the first half the best, the second half became a little boring. It lowered my rating a bit, I had my hopes up for something bigger or weirder to happen. I had also hoped that the science fiction tag it had on Goodreads would have been more prominent.

I gave this book 3 out of 5 stars – I liked it and will recommend it.