At first I thought this was going to be an aggressively bisexual love triangle at the intersection of some interesting commentary on tech, relationships and society, so I was excited, but eventually I just found it tedious.

I find people who work in tech tend to have this very spare, unassuming, non-flowery prose which can sometimes sound meaningful without saying a whole lot, which is what this sounded like. It started off with relationships as Mary is let go from another job and vacations in Ibiza, where she meets Tom, and the two form a connection that they rekindle in the UK. Tom works for an experimetal pharma company and Mary works in marketing.

Then Mary's friend Lara, a college lover who abandoned her without much commentary, wants to hire her for her new startup, a dating app, and hounds her until she relents. I thought there was chemistry between Lara and Mary as kids but as adults Lara is cold, unlikable, has unapologetic affairs with married men, and definitely creepy. We are supposed to feel like she is viable love interest but she just came across as predatory.

Tom's firm is working on an anti-depressant that turns out to be an incredible aphrodisiac, and the two companies become intertwined as issues with consent and privacy emerge. What the app is really about is very confusing- it's not dating, it appears to be an event planner for drug-fueled rape parties. I guess there's a broader commentary there but I found it grueling to get through.

It basically felt like sitting in a meeting that could have been in an email where people endlessly rehash their mission statement using all the progressive buzzwords.

Which might be interesting if you work in tech but when everyone's also high it doesn't make a more interesting novel.

So sadly, this was very much not for me, and I felt as if I had lost hours of my life to a boring meeting at a sex dungeon.

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for the advance review copy. I am leaving this review voluntarily.

Mary meets Tom in Ibiza. Tom has invented a new kind of antidepressant. Mary's friend, Lara, is a former rebellious arts student turned girlboss of a 'new and innovative' dating app. I will say that this is a book that doesn't shy away from talking about work, but I'm not sure if it pays off.

The characters dance between positions of feeling very superior to corporate tactics and marketing ploys and buzzwords, but then spend a lot of time taking marketing very seriously.

There's quite a strange tone—it seemed like characters were often commenting on capitalism or marketing or socialization or contemporary sexual relationships in a light, opinion-piece essayistic voice. Especially in Tom's storyline, there were interesting parts of characters' lives and worldviews regarding sex and relationships, but this was all in the backstory!

There's a tic of describing people's appearances as 'like X celebrity,' and a attitude of generalized stupefaction and dread and throwing one's hands in the air about the modern condition. This is punctuated by very brief moments of images or situations that are actually surprising. I found the denoument cartoonish.

A review in the Guardian made me very interested, but BONDING felt very same-same to a lot of "tech satires" that are not quite intense enough to be satirical.

Thanks to Netgalley and FSG for the ebook. After losing her job, Mary takes a trip to Ibiza and meets Tom, a chemist who works for a company about to launch an exciting new antidepressant. Back in London, Mary starts dating Tom and gets hired by an old friend, Lara, to work at her dating app that is looking to disrupt the industry. Both companies intersect at points and both Tom and Lara pull Mary in opposite directions, both with romantic designs for her. A novel that deals with how we live now with thoughtful and extreme characters popping up at all points.

I struggled with this one - it felt meandering and meaningless, and while I didn’t personally mind the shifts between first and third person narration, I think it will come across as jarring to some.