A review by venneh
Earworm by Aaron Thomas Milstead

2.0

After a certain point, what hurts so much about reading Earworm is that you can see glimpses of the book this could've been, had an editor taken even a glance at it for more than five minutes. Earworm's biggest problem is that there is a very specific voice that keeps plopping into the narrative that would really like you to know how cool he is because he's seen this film, and this is just exactly like that! Instead we get this cringey shorthand that appears every few pages with references that not only completely miss the point of the original scene, it actively derails any scene taking place, and makes the reader cringe so badly that I started wondering if I was having an out of body experience at several points throughout. There's a solid alien parasite story here, the problem is that you hate the main character so much that you start rooting for the brain disease to please act quicker and save you from this godforsaken hellscape. The rape jokes stopped being funny in the 90s. But hey now, we're all stars, go put this down and pick up literally anything else in your life, it will have more redeeming value than this Ready Player One wannabe ass book. Really, the best thing I can compare it to is any American remake of a European horror film that completely misses the point and is utterly insufferable as they gleefully and willfully leave the point several states back.