I'm Starting to Worry About This Black Box of Doom
Ratings21
Average rating4.1
A standalone darkly humorous thriller set in modern America's age of anxiety, by New York Times bestselling author Jason Pargin. Outside Los Angeles, a driver pulls up to find a young woman sitting on a large black box. She offers him $200,000 cash to transport her and that box across the country, to Washington, DC. But there are rules: He cannot look inside the box. He cannot ask questions. He cannot tell anyone. They must leave immediately. He must leave all trackable devices behind. As these eccentric misfits hit the road, rumors spread on social media that the box is part of a carefully orchestrated terror attack intended to plunge the USA into civil war. The truth promises to be even stranger, and may change how you see the world.
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I just finished I'm Starting to Worry About This Black Box of Doom by Jason Pargin and here are my thoughts.
What would you do if your Lyft passenger offers you $200,000 to drive her and a box across the country and you aren't allowed to bring your electronics, look in the box or ask any questions?
This book was WILD!!!! I listened to the audio as well and I found the audio was better than reading it for myself.
Abbott has his problems. He's on meds for his issues. Lives at home with his dad, uses his dad's vehicle when he picks passengers up... He is living a sad existence. His whole life is on his twitch streaming account.
Ether is weird... Like really weird but her personality seemed to work when she banters with Abbott. It was an interesting dynamic. I love dark humor and this one was well paced and exciting. It had some uninteresting parts but I think that was because I needed to stay with Abbott and what was going on with their road trip. I didn't connect with the characters like I normally do but I found I understood why Abbott was the way he was so connecting didn't matter. Ether was annoying but she annoyed Abbott too so that worked for me.
This was my first book by this author and I cannot wait to read more. I found the way social media was used to show how it shapes our thoughts and opinions. It was clever.
The ending was great. I really found the whole book totally entertaining.
4 stars
Thank you to @stmartinspress for my gifted copy!
Interesting premise, humorous and thrilling storylines, but felt a bit preachy with the social commentary (although I agree, it nails the online community conspiracy crowd) The ending felt...anticlimactic. Not bad by any means, but the “John dies at the end” series was far more enjoyable.
