The central questions of why and how a large chunk of the population suddenly drop dead are worth it in the end.

While many readers wouldn’t view satire as a palate cleanser, I needed the dose of humor one would bring between darker stories. At the base level, Canceled more than brought that needed comedy. I laughed my way through quite a few sections, as characters primped, preened, and debased themselves on and off the camera (or at least trying to) for fame and fortune. Not just the characters that were originally meant to be on film, either.

The story holds nothing sacred when it comes to the hustle culture surrounding the internet and revenue streams that content creators can set up. From creating new celebrity cryptocurrencies to the parasocial relationships that drive the public’s fixation on online personalities, everything is on the table. When one family already making bank from that hustle decides to pile a reality show onto the heap, they find everything about themselves is on the table too. The thirst for consumption from their fans leads to a real problem with privacy; the mirror held up to our reality a clever one.

Lane and her daughters might be the initial focus of the reality show, but the circle widens with each NDA signed by crew. Even the younger brother personifying many of the gamer goth stereotypes right down to living in the basement gets dragged into it. Many of those periphery characters getting caught up in the web drove my favorite moments.

As much as I did enjoy reading Canceled, a few things kept me from rating it higher. I felt like there wasn’t a strong through-line while I was reading. This was partly because the narrative doesn’t really have protagonists in a traditional sense, more like a giant harem each doing their own thing. In a manner not unlike reality TV, the typical pattern of a story isn’t followed either, and a few threads never get tied up. The other issue for me was errors. Missing words and typos happened frequently enough to take note, and took me out of the story a bit.

If readers are looking for a laugh, particularly one that doesn’t shy away from poking fun at both politics and the internet, Canceled more than fulfills that.

Canceled is available to buy on Amazon.

Verdict:

READABLE