Emily: Welcome back to YA book club! We’re here to chat about The Getaway, the latest novel from Lamar Giles. We read Lamar Giles’ Not So Pure and Simple for YA book club back in February 2020 (simpler times), and we LOVED it. So we were super excited to pick this one up.

The Getaway is the story of Jay, who’s living his best life at Karloff Country, one of the world’s most famous resorts. We get serious Disney World vibes from this place. It is Disney World, basically. Anyway, Jay’s got good friends, a great family, and a job he loves, working after school at the property’s main theme park. Outside, the world might be falling apart, but inside the resort, people can escape from their problems. But behind this perfect community are dark secrets. When the richest and most powerful families arrive and don’t leave, employees discover that the resort has been selling shares in an end-of-the-world oasis. The world may be ending, but the most powerful people will remain safe. Now Jay and the rest of the resort’s employees will be the ones to care for them, whether they like it or not.

Spoilers to follow obviously.

Phew. Wild. Okay. So let’s talk about this resort, since I sort of said it already. Karloff Country is Disney World, right?

Mary: 100% it is Disney World—not Land, but World. Sure, Giles makes sure to mention that Disney World exists in the book, and that Karloff country is nestled somewhere in Virginia instead of Florida, but we all know that Karloff Country is Disney World—if, of course, Walt Disney had lived longer and had kids that wanted in on the game more enthusiastically. 

I was sickly fascinated by all of the descriptions of Karloff Country because that’s the kind of Disney fan I am. I can completely acknowledge that a lot of what makes WDW tick is inherently creepy (the tunnels under the parks, for example), but practical and smart. Giles questions what would happen if such an intricately designed, customer service-driven experience was used for completely evil intent.

Emily: Yeah, and I mean… who hasn’t wondered what really goes on in those tunnels? It’s ripe for thrillers/horror fiction.

Mary: I’m going to be up front if this isn’t already clear: I loved this book. I remember texting you and saying that when I was reading it (via audiobook in the car), I just sat back and thought, “Dang, Giles has done it again!” Lamar Giles is now one of my favorite YA authors and I’ll give everything he writes a shot from now on. Like, really, he is VERY GOOD and people seem to be sleeping on him. 

Emily: I agree. I know very few people who have read Not So Pure and Simple, and it’s really such a delight. He also has a back catalog we have yet to explore. I’m especially interested in Spin, which is a YA mystery. 

Mary: One thing I really appreciate about The Getaway, and Not So Pure and Simple, too, is that there are layers of the narrative going on. On the surface, we have an interesting exploration of what a big corporation like Disney might do during a nuclear war, how it might pivot to cater to the ultra rich (which Disney is kind of already doing IMO, but that’s a whole other conversation). But we also have a rich story about race and class, and how those social categories clash with Seychelle (am I spelling that right?). She’s the mixed-race child of the heir to the Karloff throne, and her family never lets her forget that she’s not like them. She has to walk a tightrope between behaving to keep her family happy and being true to herself.

I’m talking a lot—but you know what I mean! There’s a lot going on in this book and it’s surprisingly complex, but just what I’d expect from Giles.

Emily: Yeah, I also saw it as an interesting commentary on what has been happening in America over the past couple of years, specifically during the pandemic. Big corporations profited big time over the pandemic, and small businesses and individuals suffered. Irreparably. I couldn’t help but see the parallels. 

For those of you who are reading this blog but didn’t read the book, I guess I should explain a little bit. Basically, the Karloff corporation had a huge part in orchestrating the collapse of society as we know it. Why? Because they saw that they could profit from being a safe haven for those who were rich enough to afford it. In other words, when calamity hits, the rich people are rich enough to rise above it (and even live better, cushier lives), and everyone else is left behind. Yes, this book is set in the future, but that felt very much like… right now.

Mary: Absolutely. This felt so of-the-moment to me, especially considering how Disney is pricing out the average American and catering specifically to super-rich clients (you know, by offering a $6,000 Star Wars hotel experience). Also, the level of friendliness and servitude expected from Karloff Country employees—even before the fall of society (lol)—is very Disney-esque. Not “breaking character,” giving guests magical moments. It’s Disney.

I want to talk about some of the very cool near-future science fiction stuff we have going on. Obviously there are the wristbands that, well, shock people to death and act as keys to nearly everything (you know, like Disney’s Magic Bands), but there’s also an advanced AI network that controls almost everything. We also have candies that, oh, make people into superpowered beasts, more or less. This is a great example of science fiction that isn’t leaning too hard on the nitty gritty details, but still provides enough reasoning for how everything works. What did you think of the world building through tech like this? 

Emily: I didn’t at all mind that none of it was explained in detail because none of this stuff was super central to the plot. It was more like a backdrop to give you a sense of what kind of world we’re living in. There would have been no point in giving us more information. But it did add nice details to the world. And I think it very clearly told readers that we were in a future world but not so far into the future that it was unrecognizable. 

Mary: Yes, for sure. I think what Giles has done is very masterful. He essentially took something lots people would be familiar with—like the Magic Bands—and changed one little thing—oh, they can kill you now!—which made the world building feel logical and easy to understand. We don’t need to know the exact way that the band attaches to your arm or anything, because we get the idea from both real world context and the extra detail provided in the book. I thought it was really great world building because it let readers bring their own imaginations and experiences to the book. It wasn’t patronizing.

I also want to talk about how absolutely dystopian this was. There’s one scene in particular that’s going to stick with me, where two employees—who didn’t even do anything—are being punished to set an example for the rest of the employees. The punishment? Well, you might have guessed death and you’d be right. The two employees are creatively executed by being shot down a water slide with a noose around their necks. This scene was harrowing to read, and I felt myself shift to the edge of my seat, literally. It is just such a bleak moment, where readers really get the idea (if they didn’t already) that there are no laws anymore. The rich can just do whatever they want, and what they want is apparently torturing and killing people they see as beneath them.

Again, as you said before, I could definitely see this happening. It really highlights a socioeconomic divide, where the rich sometimes feel like they deserve better treatment/more recognition for, IDK, having money? 

Emily: It’s also hard to ignore what this book is saying about slavery in America. This book is also looking at how extreme wealth disparity creates this caste system that essentially creates enslaved people and masters. Like one of the most disturbing things to me is how Jay is basically turned into a pet for this rich family.

Mary:  Definitely. That was a wild turn of events, and it plays into how the rich think (at least in the world of this book) that they can buy their way out of everything. The family Jay is staying with lost a child of their own, and essentially Jay is a replacement for them, and a receptacle for the mother’s grief.

Emily: I know we’ve talked a lot about the ideas in this novel. But ideas don’t work as a novel without good characters and a good story. So how do we feel about Jay, Seychelle, and the other characters?

Mary: I really enjoyed Jay as a narrator. He had a good inner monologue and was his own character (not just a reader insert). That said, he’s also the perfect person to see the story through because he doesn’t know what the heck is going on. Everything is new to him, and it’s new to the reader, too. I especially appreciated that Jay was a Karloff Country fan himself, and he enjoyed the park and the brand on its own. That worked to give readers background on what Karloff Country is, but it made sense for him as a character, too. He genuinely likes it! 

I didn’t completely get Seychelle for part of the book, but that was by design. By the end, obviously, I came around on her, especially once we got more chapters from her perspective. 

I’ll also add that even side characters had some personality and purpose, and that made the whole world more believable to me. I’m thinking specifically about the flight attendant-turned-experimentation guinea pig. Also, Jay’s parents show up a good bit but aren’t main characters, and I really felt for them and wondered how they were doing when we hadn’t seen them for long. 

Jay really loves his parents and has a good relationship with them, which isn’t always the norm for YA books, and that was nice to see. Did you have any favorite characters or standout side characters?

Emily: Yeah, I totally agree about Jay’s parents, and I think that’s one of the things that made Jay’s going to live with another family so shocking to me. Because he did seem to have such a supportive family life. It’s nice to see that in YA, for sure, and we did see that in Not So Pure and Simple as well. So I do appreciate that that’s something Giles explores in his books. 

Sometimes YA novels make adults seem so helpless and clueless. And I get why, because it’s a way to keep the kids central to the action of the story without the parents getting in the way. But the young characters in this story are really proactive while still having parents and adult characters who were very involved. That seems more realistic, to me. 

Mary: 100% —Jay’s parents were trying to do things, but were also way more cautious than Jay and his friends, which both makes sense and helps put them on the sidelines for part of the novel. They’re just trying to go along with things and resist quietly, but Jay and co. are willing to stick out a bit more.

It’s so hard for me to constructively write about this book because I just enjoyed it so much. It hit a lot of boxes for me personally—I love thinking about the dark side of Disney (and how insidious its marketing is), and I think that all of the additional layers Giles added made things even more interesting. For me, this book was a 5/5 all the way through. I admit, though, I was a captive audience because I listened in the car. That could’ve definitely affected things!

Emily: I gave this book four stars. I really enjoyed it, and I loved all the different themes and ideas Giles was playing with here. But I think ultimately, I just liked Not So Pure and Simple so much, and this one was missing some of the character development and humor that I enjoyed so much in that book. Not that this needed to be funny. It’s totally okay for this to be a different genre. But reading this book after Not So Pure and Simple, I can’t help but compare the two a little. 

Do you want to tell the club what we’re reading next?

Mary: Yes! We have a special holiday read up next! We’ll be talking about Whiteout, a novel of interconnected stories set in Atlanta. This one is really exciting, because it’s tackled by an all-star team of authors, including some of our faves, like Nic Stone and Tiffany D. Jackson. You love to see it!

Emily: Just look at this dream team!

Mary: This novel promises to explore themes of Black joy, too, which I’m excited to see! Overall, just super pumped for this one. See you then! 

Emily: Can’t wait!