I really liked the concept and idea of this, very much up my street both as a writer and a reader. But I wanted to care more for Jon in order to keep me super interested in his plight.

DNF - I was really intrigued to read this book but I didn't end up vining with it as much as I had hoped. The characters left me feeling annoyed & I was hoping to explore a different aspect of the plot.

The download date was unfortunately missed, I would be happy to re-review if it became available again. I have awarded stars for the book cover and description as they both appeal to me. I would be more than happy to re-read and review if a download becomes available. If you would like me to re-review please feel free to contact me at thesecretbookreview@gmail.com or via social media The_secret_bookreview (Instagram) or Secret_bookblog (Twitter). Thank you.

I enjoyed the premise of this novel, exploiting the impact of debt on ordinary citizens, Jonathan Abernathy is caught up in a programme monitoring the dreams of others. Desperate to achieve financial security, he is an ideal candiate for a role that is more sinister than at first appears. I found the writing quite difficult to follow but enjoyed the concept.

A criticism of US capitalism meets a sci-fi like premise where dreams can be entered and edited.

The narrative style was quite unique and fun, and I think this style kept the book from feeling too depressing, even though the theme is bleak (especially because the issues raised in this novel are painfully real). It also was not subtle with the criticism of capitalism, but managed to stop short of coming across as preachy or heavy-handed.

Abernathy as a character is so interesting because he could easily be a real person and his complexity meant that I could never quite be sure if I liked him or not! He is a sympathetic character, who is deep in debt through no fault of his own, and yet, at some points in this book I felt like I was reading a villain origin story due to his complete ignorance of ethics and general self-absorption.

I found some of the dreaming parts to be a bit confusing, though maybe that was the point, since Abernathy didn't care to pay attention to what his job actually entailed! I agree with a criticism I saw in another review about various plot holes, such as the employer at his second job seemingly not noticing that Abernathy had missed shifts when he slept for multiple days. There are a few other inconsistencies that mean I'm still sort of confused about the background and context of the company Abernathy works for and how it all works.

I get why people have compared this to Severance (the TV show) - it's definitely got a similar vibe, and the workplace and its overall objectives are similarly mysterious. This novel also does not go into any sort of explanation of how they are able to enter people's dreams, or what technology is allowing them to edit dreams - it's just part of the world that you have to accept as true.

Overall I really enjoyed this one and found it to be a fairly quick read! I'd recommend it to fans of Severance, and fans of anti-capitalism!

Jonathan Abernathy is deep in debt, from his student loans and an inherited debt he had no idea about. Unable to find a decent job, when he is offered a unique government role in order to pay back his debts, he has little choice. The definition of a 'dream job' he will be working as a dream auditor, part of a whole crew who are tasked with entering workers dreams and cleaning up the bad parts in the hopes that they will be more settled, well-rested and therefore more productive in their jobs. But os Jonathan starting to get real-life and dream-life mixed up? And how will it affect his relationships?

This was a quirky, scifi-dystopian tale with an interesting, fresh plot and some brilliant characters, especially Jonathan. He is so likeable and who doesn't love to root for an underdog! It also touches on some important social issues.

Highly recomended if you are in the mood for a unique read that will make you think!

Debt-riddled twenty-something Jonathan Abernathy is in desperate need of a job. So when a government loan forgiveness programme offers him a job auditing the dreams of the white-collar workforce (a scheme corporations can opt into to guarantee a squeaky clean subconscious and maximum work performance from its employees) Abernathy believes things are about to look up. That is until the job takes a darker turn and Abernathy realises there may be no coming back from it.

I was instantly intrigued by the book’s premise and the fact it was marketed as a critique of late capitalism, providing social commentary on corporate exploitation and debt-induced poverty. A bleakness permeates the entire story combatted with Abernathy’s quirky earnestness that’s both heartwarming and depressing; from the first paragraph we know Death is waiting for Abernathy. Death has marked Abernathy and given him three years to live.

Jonathan Abernathy as a main character is quintessentially human and very relatable. He’s bumbling and awkward and desperate to please and be valued. He’s not particularly brave and never knows the exact right thing to say. He struggles to reconcile being a good person with the personal gain and feelings of success and validation that comes with his new unethical job. He was a great character through which to judge this economic culture of inequality and entrapment.

Overall this was a unique, thought-provoking story. The plot dragged a little in the middle and felt quite lacklustre, otherwise this would easily have been a four star read.

An original idea but I think this book is like marmite and it wasn’t for me. Although I can see from the reviews that many loved it I found it difficult to read and even more difficult to understand.

A down-on-his-luck everyman is recruited into a government agency that audits dreams, extracting anxieties and fears so that workers remain productive in the waking world. He is enthusiastic, delighted to have the work and eager to please despite its creepiness. His supervisor dislikes him but over time seeks to help him understand what he's gotten himself into. It's not good. As his waking life and dream life converge, Jonathan Abernathy inches closer to his death.

A black comedy about capitalism and the endless American quest for productivity at the expense of the worker. The author's strong voice creates a fresh world of inescapable horrors. If 1984 had a dark sense of humor, it would be something like Jonathan Abernathy You Are Kind. Can't wait to read what Molly McGhee writes next.

The premise of this book was intriguing. Who wouldn’t want to get out of debt given the chance. Yet the ‘job’ is much more than Jonathan can handle.
It’s great to see original and creative narratives being published and this title is certainly going to be talked about.
Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the opportunity to review this book.

This was a twisty, capitalist, hellscape of a book - and I loved it immensely.

Jonathan Abernathy is in a bind. Loaded down with debts from the American education system, alongside inherited debts from his late parents, he feels quite desperate. So when an opportunity for a job, as part of a government loan forgiveness program, appears, he jumps on it. The job? Auditing people’s dreams while he sleeps, removing any issues and blockades in their subconscious that could impede on their waking working performance at their jobs.

I couldn’t put this book down. It felt like falling into an extremely twisted rabbit hole, knowing that things were becoming darker, while Jonathan continues to tell himself that he is kind, he is confident, and is committed to be a good worker, even when he doesn’t believe it himself.

I don’t want to give too much away, as all of the different twists and turns had me on the edge of my seat, breaking my heart, and making me gasp, all at different intervals - or sometimes all at once. Sometimes it felt like peering into the purest raw slice of humanity and feeling. There was one chapter in particular, when Jonathan experienced a lovely day out with his neighbour, and oh god. I didn’t know my heart could be so warmed and so inexplicably broken all at once.

The writing style was unique, which I personally loved, and found compulsively readable, especially with the past tense narrative hinting at what horrors were still yet to come.

It’s a brilliant critique on the current capitalist system we live under, the desperation of many every day people, and the never ending greed of corporations. I want to push the book into so many peoples hands simply so we can discuss it, and they can experience the rollercoaster of this story. I, myself, am still reeling from it.

Thank you to the publishers, and netgalley, for the copy to review.

A copy of this book was sent to me in return for an honest review.

I expected the story to pan out very differently and to be very honest, it wasn’t a satisfying read for me. I think it left me feeling quite down, sadly. I’m sure there is a market for this type of story, but sorry to say, not for me. I hate to give a review that isn’t positive.

This is a really frustrating novel - it's a great premise and it has some at-times highly likeable characters but it really falls apart as it progresses and it's hampered by having a central character who is oblivious to the point of coming across as incredibly dense and pathologically incurious. The plot isn't well drawn enough (and a high concept premise like this really deserves to be properly thought through and the world-building is weak, with a lot of telling rather than showing to compensate. I genuinely almost stopped reading when I was 80% of the way through and I wouldn't have missed much if I had. This is a really great draft but not yet a good novel. Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the ARC in exchange for an honest review.

JONATHAN ABERNATHY, YOU ARE KIND felt like a unique read to me - the type of genre story I maybe haven't indulged in since my teen years. It's an intriguing story, an out-there concept that piqued my interest as soon as I read the synopsis. As is sometimes the case with a slight outside-the-box concept, the plot isn't always easy to predict, and this made the story quite mysterious at times. I couldn't always follow the logic of things, but that is perhaps the point. As a whole, I felt there were messages buried inside the story about the banality of modern life, what we do to Get Through The Day, how it's just never going to be all that fair for some people who get stuck in certain situations, and as such I wouldn't call it an uplifting book. But it's definitely one that makes you think.

I managed about half of this book. But, then I have up. Nothing much really happened, the characters were all a bit unlikable. Also, I didn't like the way that the narrator told you what might have happened. If Abernathy had said x,y,a then this would have happened but it didnt.

This is a workplace novel like no other – imagine Inception meets The Office and you’ll get the idea.

Jonathan Abernathy is in his mid-twenties, saddled with hundreds of thousands of dollars of debt and bouncing from one dead end job to another. He is a man going nowhere. That is until he is approached by a secretive government department which promises to solve his problems if only he will help them to solve the problems of corporate America. He finds himself hired as a dream auditor, sneaking into the dreams of white-collar workers to flag their fears and anxieties for removal to make them happier and more productive. Rather than dealing with the reasons that people are feeling fearful and anxious it’s much easier (and cheaper) to just meddle with their subconscious and make those feelings go away.

This is a novel bubbling over with inventiveness and laced throughout with a sense of ennui and existential angst. Like all the best fiction it has something important to say about the world we live in today, in this case the precarious existence of people saddled with debt, struggling to make ends meet when the world is stacked against them (“Abernathy can now spend his salary on rent, debt, or food. Though he can’t have all three, he can choose any two he likes”). It’s not all bleak though because it’s actually incredibly funny – like a stick of rock there is a dark sense of humour running through the whole thing.

It’s also incredibly well written - I read this on the Kindle and found myself highlighting something on every other ‘page’. If this is how good her debut is I’m super excited to read whatever McGhee writes next.

The plot of this book misses the mark but the writing is beautiful in places and the writer interesting and original. There are lots of ideas in the book but, for me anyway, it was a bit of a slog getting through it.

This is a very strange novel, one I appreciate the premise of and idea behind but ended up not enjoying. Some was down to the wry, direct narrator who really lacked subtley in driving the point of the book home, mixed with descriptions of surreal dreams (and non-dreams) I found hard to get straight in my head at times. I also found the tone pretty relentlessly bleak instead of finding much humour in it - much of the humour was directed towards the protagonist which was fair enough considering his character but didn't really provide any relief in the story. I thought the strength of this book came from the character development of the protagonist and the choices he makes and the way they tie in with the message - that part was really well done.

Jonathan Abernathy, man and book, are odd fishes. Both can be painfully callow, but they're  trying so very hard to be grownup and sophisticated that you have to like them at least a little. 2.5 / 5 rounded up, with hope McGhee can produce a subtler, more incisive novel in the future.

Ironically for a book foregrounding the subconscious, there's just not much subtlety or ambiguity in Abernathy. McGhee has a strong voice and merciless eye for hypocrisy, but her use of an omniscient, heavily foreshadowing narrator makes the book feel didactic. It's one thing to know Jonathan Abernathy is going to die and it's his own fault, and another to lampshade his every (glaring) failing and mistake up to the point he's finally eaten by a grue. Meanwhile, the corporate-gubmint villains practically twirl their moustaches outlining their plots, while virtually every single character we meet in the book's nameless town turns out to be already related to each other like a dreamy, downmarket Star Wars. It's all just a bit on the nose.

In keeping with its blunt plotting, Abernathy is too often filled with the righteous fury of a 20-something who has just had a student debt payment docked from their paycheck.  McGhee's targets are good ones — consumer debt in America is absolutely weaponized against 90% of the population — but it's hard to stay sympatico when the prose drifts away into reveries about how "the nature of dreaming and working is infinite, and thus incomprehensible." To be fair, that's part of an interesting point about how the tedium of labour steals time away, but psuedo-Theoretical clunkers like that litter the text. David Graeber's ideas (and fact-checking) have their own issues, but I certainly wouldn't take his prose style so much to heart. 

To the author's credit, Abernathy finally shakes off its portentiousness to offer something life-affirming and clear by the end, and many of the book's eerie, lambent dreamscapes stay with you after finishing. As much as the narration can be on poor dumb Jonathan, you also get the feeling McGhee actually cares for her creation, which is more than can be said for many clinical novels of ideas. Hopefully that empathy and insight is put to slightly gentler use in the future.

Funny, my first thought about this book was along the lines of “what a strange idea for a title”, and now that I’ve read it I’ve had so many other thoughts that the peculiar title seems almost inconsequential.

For me, ‘Jonathan Abernathy’ is one of the better stories that involve dreamwalking/dreamworlds, maybe precisely because that’s a big part of the plot but somehow not its core, especially considering we never really learn the magical mechanics involved anyway. At its core, this story feels very real and very human, crushingly so at times, with lighter moments here and there, but ultimately with lots of heartbreak: relationships fading or broken and never fixed, with goals unaccomplished and destiny coming to collect.

It becomes fairly clear early on that the reader will understand more about the situation the main character got himself into than the man himself - “government-sponsored indentured servitude” seems to sum it up pretty well, after all - and that remains true for the rest of the book, I feel. I’m not entirely sure if the author meant for Abernathy to come across as simply naive and caught up in his own thoughts and problems; at times it seemed more like him being willfully obtuse because otherwise the world around and the choices he made would have become too much to handle. Regardless, as the story unfolds, we see him hopeful, determined, confused, desperate, scared, resigned, emotional, and everything in between. It's not always 100% relatable, but it's consistently touching. And sure, it’s not a happy story, but it is a satisfying one - and with a much-needed glimpse of hope at the end, too.