{"id":4659,"date":"2025-11-01T21:31:24","date_gmt":"2025-11-01T21:31:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/?p=4659"},"modified":"2025-11-01T21:31:24","modified_gmt":"2025-11-01T21:31:24","slug":"review-zero-by-jason-oleary","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/?p=4659","title":{"rendered":"Review: Zero by Jason O\u2019Leary"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n<\/div>\n

Synopsis:<\/strong><\/p>\n

Smith Babbitt is in the prime of his life: he\u2019s only 25 years into his 89-year lifespan.<\/p>\n

He knows this because of Timmy\u00ae, the mysterious app that can tell you with infallible accuracy how old you will be when you die. Smith still has 64 years to go. But lately he\u2019s been in a rut, and his long lifespan is starting to feel like a sentence.<\/p>\n

Possible salvation arrives in the form of Mavis Pead, a co-worker at Smith\u2019s demoralizing job. Smith is infatuated, despite the age difference: Mavis has just entered the last of her 43 years. She\u2019s a \u201czero\u201d \u2013 the most shunned demographic in society. When a careless act leads to their boss\u2019s apparent death before his time, Smith and Mavis are thrown together in an intrigue that could call Timmy\u00ae\u2019s infallibility into question. Mavis might not be so old after all \u2013 nor Smith so young.<\/p>\n

A laugh-out-loud sendup of a technologically dependent culture,\u00a0Zero<\/span>\u00a0is also a tender love story and a big-hearted reflection on the true meaning of age. A story that asks the question, What do we do with the time we\u2019re given, whether we know how long we have\u2026or we don\u2019t?<\/p>\n

Favorite Lines:<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t want to waste my life, that\u2019s all. And I wish I didn\u2019t have to know how much of my life is still left for me to waste.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cHere I am. My wholeness is not determined by the sum of my parts.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat a cruel fate to be human, to comprehend our mortality but have no idea what it means.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI still have a little time left.\u201d<\/p>\n

My Opinion:<\/strong><\/p>\n

I received a copy of this book from the author in exchange for my honest opinion.<\/p>\n

Zero<\/em> is one of those rare dystopian novels that feels both absurd and uncomfortably real. O\u2019Leary builds a world where technology predicts your exact lifespan down to the year, where aging is a countdown, and where morality and bureaucracy mix in a gray, numbing fog.<\/p>\n

The narrator, Smith, is painfully awkward, overthinking everything from his boss\u2019s smile to the ethics of approving medication for his own father. He\u2019s not a classic hero \u2014 just someone trying to survive inside a machine that\u2019s both literal and societal. I found myself cringing for him, then rooting for him, then realizing he\u2019s just one of millions quietly losing themselves in the monotony of data, rules, and meaningless metrics.<\/p>\n

What really works here is O\u2019Leary\u2019s tone \u2014 dry, darkly funny, and relentlessly sharp. Every office scene feels familiar, even though it\u2019s set in a future where people measure life in countdown clocks instead of birthdays. The satire hits close: the mandatory \u201chandbook acknowledgments,\u201d the boss who mistakes control for care, the idea that emotional exhaustion has become a corporate performance metric. It\u2019s the kind of story that makes you laugh and then immediately feel slightly nauseated for doing so.<\/p>\n

Summary:<\/strong><\/p>\n

Overall, if The Office<\/em> and Black Mirror<\/em> had a bleakly funny child, it might look like Zero<\/em>. It\u2019s part dystopian satire, part existential meltdown, and perfect for readers who love dark humor, speculative fiction, and character-driven narratives about bureaucracy, mortality, and meaning.\u00a0<\/p>\n

This isn\u2019t a novel about saving the world \u2014 it\u2019s about trying not to disappear inside it. Happy reading!<\/p>\n

Check out Zero<\/em> here!<\/a><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Synopsis: Smith Babbitt is in the prime of his life: he\u2019s only 25 years into his 89-year lifespan. He knows this because of Timmy\u00ae, the mysterious app that can tell you with infallible accuracy how old you will be when you die. Smith still has 64 years to go. But lately he\u2019s been in a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":4660,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4659","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-bookreviews"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4659"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4659"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4659\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/4660"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4659"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4659"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4659"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}