Slashtag by Jon Cohn

4/5 stars

Slashtag is an incredible adventure through Big Brother meets Saw meets H.H. Holmes! Told with narratives, actual podcast episodes, cast emails, and texts, Slashtag is an homage to trash TV and media monopoly.

Jon really brought the story to life through the eyes of his characters. They really encapsulated reality TV and the cheesy, over-scripted aspects of it, but the added true horror elements completely changed the game. There was never a dull moment while reading this book, and I was so engrossed in the characters and their lives outside of the competition.

Now….the podcasts. I have a love-hate relationship with them. I absolutely adored the added information that the podcasts, and the website, itself provided. I loved the additional look at the cast, the hotel, and the company itself. However, the podcasts were also distracting. The long expositions on the movies that the show was adapted from seemed to drag and took me out of the story a bit. I didn’t think those parts were necessary for the purpose of the podcast, and almost wished that they were just kept to recaps and reactions to what was happening on the show.

What an absolutely brilliant idea, though! I’ve never read a book that was supplemented by a website and multiple podcast episodes, so this was a really fun curveball. I did think it was a little hard to know when to listen to the episodes after the first one. I didn’t catch on that the notifications for the new episodes were at the bottom of the phone until the 4th episode so I ended up going back and listening to 2 and 3 a little later than I should have. I wish it was a little clearer on when I should listen to them so I’m getting the full immersive experience. I did think that Chef Costanza’s character was extremely obvious on the podcast…..the first time he had very little to no accent then when he comes back, he’s suddenly accompanied with a thick accent and voracious swearing, which seemed hugely opposed to Costanza’s actual character. That didn’t gel as well with me as everything else.

I did have a few formatting issues, specifically on the pages with the text messages. They didn’t seem to sync right so I had pages that were duplicates, but with a couple differences, a page that didn’t line up at all with the one before it, and so on. Overall though, a totally unique and incredible experience and I can’t wait to see where Tawny and the crew go from here! I love the turn that Tawny’s character has taken with the amulet, and I’m so ready to ride this out to the end!