This book kept me somewhat entertained and was a fine listen, but the characters were flat and the story very predictable. The antagonists felt like caricatures of the stereotypical privileged male, with no depth whatsoever. I liked the storytelling, and the narrator of the audiobook is great. But the book would benefit from slower plot movement and more complexity. 

I know that the plot kind of hinges on the fact that the three “storylines” are based on famous horrors and thrillers, but I was hoping for some twists. I imagine that the author made it straightforward to emphasize the antagonist’s inadequacies, but it felt rushed, like the characters had to figure it out and escape immediately. If the characters and their situations were fleshed out more (especially the antagonist(s)) this probably could have been three or four books.

The fourth and last part of the book was anticlimactic and disappointing. I could have overlooked the simplicity of the three scenarios the girls were placed in if there was more behind it, as a greater plot. But it’s like the antagonist is just an embodiment of the word “misogyny” and not a real person. 

There was so much lacking in the setup as a whole that it wasn’t scary or thought-provoking at all. I was almost in disbelief at how badly the antagonists performed. If this guy was willing and capable of spending the kind of time, money, and effort it takes to set up an entire truman show / hunger games / squid game style arena, the team would have been a lot larger than 20 some people. If he really found the women off of online chats and managed to look far enough into their real lives to find people willing to pay to see them dead, he wouldn’t take any chances of failing. Why would he be so thorough and then abandon all effort? And assuming his interest in the genre to get him on those online chats in the first place, it doesn’t really make sense that he would half-ass such an elaborate plan. If it was too much to do three different arenas he could have just put them all in one, or at least done them one at a time so that his actors/employees/henchman? didn’t have multiple places to be at once. His explanations at the end were such a let down. What, he did all this to prove that women are dumb and weak? Who was he proving it to? No one was watching but him. I know misogynistic men are small minded, but no human is that brainless.