Title: Exit Party
Author: Emily St. John Mandel
Pages: 320
Release: September 15, 2026

Emily St. John Mandel’s novels might just not be for me. This is the third book of hers that I’ve read, and I’ve found them all to be quite underwhelming. I find her prose flat and uninteresting. The hook of parallel worlds is en vogue these days, but St. John Mandel does little new with the conceit here.

The plotting and dour tone don’t help matters. It’s a premise that could lend itself to playfulness, surprise, or more creative stakes, but the novel rarely capitalizes on those possibilities. Neither the premise nor its execution was compelling enough to overcome my disinterest in her writing style.

The HBO adaptation of Station Eleven is my favorite piece of television of the past decade, but I was similarly left cold by the source material. Count me in if HBO takes the reins on an Exit Party limited series, but this was not my cup of tea in novel form.

★★¾