Was unable to download for some reason, but the concept seems engaging. Giving four stars for premise.

I was interested to read THE REPEAT ROOM by Jesse Ball because I enjoyed his other book Autoportrait and this is a wierd story. I didn’t enjoy this one as much. It’s okay in part one and then part two took a turn and lost me. I like the writing style but not so much the storyline. At the end I was thinking wtf did I just read?! I would still be interested to read more from this author. I listened to the audiobook and the narrator Erik Bloomquist did a good job.

The Repeat Room is unlike anything I’ve read—it’s not afraid to get super weird and leans into it hard. Think Kafka meets Lanthimos in the best (and strangest) way possible.

I don’t want to divulge too much as this is truly a book you have to experience without much context. But the story follows Abel, a worker, as he’s drawn into a bizarre jury system, with a case that spirals into layers of abuse and twisted relationships. The audiobook narration is phenomenal and gripping, but heads up: trigger warnings galore (abuse, starvation, incest, and more).

Short, intense, and thought-provoking—perfect for a wild book club discussion or even a university syllabus. I can see this one being in the running for some serious literary awards.

The Repeat Room is one of those weirdly hypnotic, deeply unsettling books that crawls under your skin. Ball starts with a dystopian nightmare that feels straight out of Black Mirror's White Bear, exploring justice in a way that’s brutal and disorienting. Then, just as you settle into the chaos, the second half flips the script—it gets personal, intimate, and almost too real. It’s all about identity, how much of it is yours to control, and how much is shaped by the things done to you. A true experiment in dehumanization. Haunting, sickening, and impossible to put down.

No one writes a bizarre, Kafkaesque story quite like Jesse Ball. The Repeat Room is no exception. In a future where fates hinge on a juror living out the life of the defendant in a trial, our MC Abel is called to serve. Abel's defendant has been charged with a heinous crime but Abel soon experiences first hand the trauma the defendant was subject to through their life.

The narration on this was top notch. With such a sparse story, it would have been easy for this to fall flat but the narrator did an excellent job building up tension and presenting a disturbing story in a perfect way. An excellent audio production.

Generally speaking, when a book is lauded as being "Kafkaesqe" it's by someone who you think maybe hasn't read any Kafka. Not so with Ball's The Repeat Room, which was chilling.

I loved this audiobook! The ending was not what I expected. I think the narrator did a great job and helped set the pace of this book and add to the twists. I love a good dystopian book, it was so interesting to think about this type of future.

Thank you to NetGalley, the author, and the publisher for this complimentary ARC in exchange for an honest review!!

The Repeat Room by Jesse Ball is not for the faint of heart. I listened to the audiobook read by Erik Bloomquist and I have to say his narration made the book feel real. He gave the storytelling a rollercoaster-like rhythm that complemented the story perfectly. I’ve never read anything like it before. It reminded me of Kafka’s Metamorphosis and the movie Dogville in that it is minimalist and absurd. It was like being inside a brutalist building, feeling small and vulnerable looking around in a mix of awe, incredulity and fear.
Please be warned that this is a dark, disturbing and at times disgusting story. Themes include incest, torture, animal cruelty and trauma to name just a few but the story is powerful in its message and you will have lots to ponder long after you’ve finished reading.

I love dystopian and I really really enjoyed this book! At first I was a little thrown off with the ending but reading more reviews about it I enjoyed it even more. Some disturbing incest things and TW for suicide. Gave it a 4 out of 5 stars!

The Repeat Room is a dystopian novel that paints a picture of the criminal justice system of the future. In this novel, citizens are put through a variety of tests to see if they are fit to be a juror. This juror decides whether a fellow citizen has worth as society’s leaders attempt to create a better society.
I enjoyed most of this book. I listened to the audiobook version and the narration by Erik Bloomquist was phenomenal. He did a wonderful job of distinguishing each character and adding emotion in just the right moments. The content was similar to an idea you would find in a Black Mirror episode. I loved the take on a future criminal justice system and the criticisms it places on our own criminal justice system, but I felt the execution of the criticisms and overall novel could have been better. There were times when the graphic content felt too disturbing. I have a very high tolerance for this, but it definitely felt like it detracted from the overall theme and message. It pulled me out of the story rather than advancing the concepts and themes. I had the same experience with some of the more poetic chapters. I found myself intrigued at first, but at times it felt like too much and left me very confused and lost and zoning out.
The novel was well-written, but definitely for more of a particular audience. Someone who likes poetry, deep-thinking, social commentary, and piecing a book together would enjoy this. It is very dark and disturbing and not for everyone. Even though this book wasn’t my cup of tea, I think the ideas and concepts are very valuable and definitely worth the read if you have extra time on your hands!

Thank you HighBridge Audio for providing this audiobook for review consideration via NetGalley. All opinions are my own. Thank you to Jesse Ball for writing such a thought-provoking book.

Content wise, there are content and trigger warnings I will put up front for child abuse, abusive parents, childhood neglect, suicide, incest, violence against children, state execution

The book is an ambitious and strongly crafted story of a very complex legal question asked in a futuristic world. The world building is exceptionally thorough and equips the reader to actually put themselves in the situation in an immersive way, not merely as a reader but almost in a way that breaks the 4th wall and essentially RPG runs the reader through the simulation the book is describing as its premise. That alone is a very unique and interesting take on sci-fi writing and the moral questions in the story itself are a vintage plot for the genre.

The reason it’s not a higher star rating for me is strictly personal, and content driven as I felt it was choices made about that plot which made this less accessible for me. The graphic passages knocked me out of the spell the near prose in the writing had cast, which felt unfortunate, and at times unnecessary, in my opinion. Given how unique in premise and execution the rest of the story was, how skilled the writer was in both concept and craft, the almost baffling content choices make this a book I cannot recommend to most of my friends or peers, and would not recommend to others because of how generally socially inaccessible that content is, even if it isn’t personally triggering. I felt the book was already pushing a judicial and moral boundary, the additional social-sexual boundary made this *very* conceptually loud.

Sincerely unfortunate, as the audiobook especially has some truly exceptional moments, and the moral verdicts to be answered would make a book like this a truly great selection for book clubs and modern book apps with discussion sections—if not for the fact that I believe all of those conversations and that broad accessibility is hindered by the inclusion of triggering or graphic content. I genuinely hope this book finds its audience because the craft, and the concept, as well as the unique and interesting execution made this a book I did enjoy and would have loved to have been able to recommend more broadly. I hope to read more by this author in the future, maybe with something that lands more in my ballpark! And additional kudos to the narrator,
Erik Bloomquist who did an exceptional job with this!

Thank you to NetGalley, High Bridge Audio, RBMedia for provision me with an audiobook version of this book in exchange for an honest review.

The audiobook narration by Erik Bloomquist is so extraordinary that I’m not embarrassed to use the term ‘tour de force.’

The book itself, in a similar way, I’m not embarrassed to say is an extraordinary reading experience.

The first half, I’m in total agreement with the publisher calling an amazing mosh of Kafka and Lanthimos.

The second half read to me like how “The Little Girl Who Was Too Fond of Matches” by Gaétan Soucy had instead been written by Gertrude Stein.

If these descriptions move you or make you curious then this is a book for you.

A disturbing dystopia novel in two parts. Part one is about a criminal justice system in which citizens are put through a battery of tests to see if they can be selected as a juror (singular) to pass judgement on a fellow citizen to decide if s/he has “worth” as those in charge attempt to build a “better society. It is absurdist like a Pinter play with odd things happening seemingly at random. I also felt a strong sense of the Beckett play, Waiting for Godot.
Then we channel Monty Python’s “And Now for Something Completely Different…”
In the radically different second half, we read (or in the case of the audiobook, hear) what the successful juror experiences while inside the mind of the accused. It is rapid fire and overwhelming. It goes back too far and shows us too much for us to be comfortable. Here it is not the illegal act of the accused that is horrific but the should-be-illegal conditions under which he was raised, leading us to question not simply the criminal justice system but the root of evil.
Recommended for those not easily triggered who can be uncomfortable when intellectually or emotionally challenged.
Upon reflection, I upped my rating from 4 to 5 stars because art serves a greater purpose when it makes us uncomfortable.
My thanks to the author, publisher, producer, and #NetGalley for access to the audiobook for review purposes. This book is available now.

What starts with a promising premise (a dystopian justice system whereby a juror is chosen to judge a criminal by literally reliving their memories) quickly descends into a deeply unsettling, difficult narrative. In this particular prisoner’s memories are disjointed, harrowing, graphic scenes of child abuse, incest, and suicide, delivered in a chaotic, stream-of-consciousness-style, making the whole second half of the book nigh-unreadable for me, personally. Some readers may enjoy this kind of story, but it certainly wasn’t for me.

A chilling, dystopian, captivating read. As the story unfolded the character's voices were clear and easy to follow, the concept was fascinating and after finishing this book, I can't stop thinking about it!

Repeat Room is, simply put, a book that give readers a lot to think about. It's strange, harrowing, dystopian, unsettling, and utterly fascinating. I'm not sure how well this book will sit with some readers because there are such taboo themes explored and it can be off-putting but, overall, it was a quick—time-wise—read and a perplexing one.

Erik Bloomquist's narration was the cherry on top. A wonderful job.

Dystopian future that looks at Abel- a menial worker- who is called to be on some sort of messed up jury duty responsibility. This system has a room called a repeat room. In this room, a juror is chosen by others to live the experience of the person on trial themselves.

Abel enters the repeat room for a defendant that is on trial.

This ride was….. wild……. It was a short read. right away, I felt I was missing a lot of context like what led the world to be ruled this way? I don’t know if this was intentional to build the suspense but I just found myself to be confused.

Thank you to NetGalley and RBMedia for the ARC in exchange for an honest review. Out on 9/24/24

I read this as a audiobook.
There is Alot of information but I kinda loved it.

It's like a future, scifi, John Grisham type thing, but also not.
I'm not sure that makes sense to anyone but me.

Basically this is set in a future where there is a competion to become a juror ( most would be on the competion NOT to be one in our reality Hah)
And the crime being judged is unknown.

I've seen a few reviews saying it wasnt gripping, I don't understand that because I needed NEEDED to know what was going on.

This was a unique concept that definitely felt meta; however, I found it a little bit hard to follow. It seemed hard to discern which story line I was supposed to focus on, and I would have liked a bit more background for overall context.

Excellent narration. Thought provoking read. I don’t normally read books quite like this. This one is short but deep so not a quick read for, I like a book that slows me down and makes me think. I think many readers will either really like this one or just not think it’s for them. No gray area IMO. Thanks for the ALC!