The Circle

3.5 stars!

I have mixed feelings about this book - mostly that I like the idea (even if some of it felt a bit like Old Man Yells At Sky to me), but I didn't like the execution. I love dystopias, and this kind of tech surveillance stuff is super interesting to me. I loved the idea of a tech company taking over stuff in the name of ~security as opposed to a political figure as you normally see in dystopias.

What I didn't like was the main character. She was boring, annoying, unsympathetic, and I mostly wanted to punch her in the face. She was so vain and only cared about how she looked to other people and I was just like ??? but why should I care about her story? Also, the idea of people just going along with all these things seems like a stretch. Yes people are into new tech and stuff, but when it gets into privacy issues, I don't think (hope) people would just be like YAY LET'S DO IT!

Also, I really wasn't into the random sex scenes. It just made little sense in the context of everything else imo.

Finally, as I mentioned earlier, the execution of the story was sloppy. I never felt like I got to know any of the other characters except maybe one or two of them. The final ~cliffy was completely resolved off screen after so much build-up, so I felt super cheated. Everything was wrapped up in a few sentences and I was left being like ??? What just happened. That was probably the disappointment. We were racing towards a big blowout or confrontation or something and instead we got "so this happened a few weeks ago and it's all good now."

So overall, I really liked the idea and at first, I was even considering a 5, but given all these issues, I would say an overall 3.5 is generous.

Meh.

" I bought this book because I wanted to make sure to read it before watching the movie and I was interested in the movie because I love Emma Watson and Tom Hanks. I have yet to watch the film but, sadly, I am hoping it is a lot more interesting than the book. I will say, the concept is incredibly fascinating. It reminds me of the illuminati stories. How we are always being watched whether we like it or not and how technology is slowly taking over the world. The book however, was so detailed that it was almost boring. It explained everything about the company and didn't even get interesting until 3/4 through the book when she meets ""Ty"", who she doesn't even know by that name yet. I didn't really understand the shark bits and pieces, I guess it was supposed to be a type of drowned out metaphor, but again the book was actually very boring, I am sorry to say. Really wasn't what I expected it to be at all."

I didn’t enjoy it but found it interesting in regards to our society’s current obsession with social media & exposing every detail of one’s life so everyone else can view it.