Book Review: Ads R Us by Claire Carmichael
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This is one of those books where it seems like the author thought, “Wouldn’t it be great to write a book about the devastating effects of constant exposure to advertising?” but forgot that she needed a compelling story to go with it.
Ever since his parents died in a car accident when he was a baby, Barrett Trent has been raised by his uncle in a community called Simplicity. With a focus on sustainability and ethics, they farm their own food, reject technology and embrace knowledge. After his uncle dies in a ridiculously contrived incident, Barrett reluctantly goes to live in the “chattering world” (the city) with his aunt.
This near future city is awash with advertising. In car advertising. In home advertising. In school advertising. Everywhere. It’s against the law to criticise corporations (because it might disrupt the economy), surveillance is all over the place and elites can get away with just about anything. (Sound familiar? Yeah, in 2019, we’re probably already there but this book was written in 2006 and back then people thought it was decades away.) Barrett is understandably dismayed, especially because his uncle taught him all about propaganda and brainwashing. He can see that the ever-present advertising is just that.
His aunt is the head of something called the Ads-4-Life Council and decides to conduct an experiment on Barrett to see how he responds to the omnipresent advertising compared to his jaded cousin, Taylor, who has grown up with it. From then on, the only time Barrett can escape it is when the ADA terrorists (Against Deceit in Advertising) hack the broadcasting systems. But the ads aren’t the only thing he has to worry about.
Sorry, that’s the best cliffhanger I could come up with. Quite a bit of effort has gone into world building but very little into the characters or the plot. The characters and plot that do populate the book are amateurishly executed. The teen dialogue feels forced and unrealistic – kids who talked like this in real life would quickly be told to knock it off by other actually cool kids who can see through wannabes. And the ads (in a world supposedly dominated by ads that can convince people to do anything) are so poorly written that they wouldn’t convince anyone to do anything except turn off and tune out.
The only positive thing I really have to say is that it was short enough for the reading experience to be over fairly quickly. Writing books for young adults is too often used as an excuse for failing to include complex prose, characters and plots. But even readers without the ability to analyse this book in detail would know it just isn’t good enough.
2 stars
*First published on Goodreads 7 September 2019
