Book Review: “Ready Player One” by Ernest Cline

Well, today you’re in for a special treat: A dual book review! As you may have learned from our book preferences post, you won’t get many dual book reviews, because we don’t typically read the same books. But today’s your lucky day, because we’ve both read “Ready Player One” by Ernest Cline.

“Ready Player One” by Ernest Cline

Joey’s Take: 4 out of 5 stars

This might be one of the only books that we have both read, because we have pretty different book interests. Melissa read this during our honeymoon, and it took me until the movie came out to get motivated to give it a try. Now before you start jumping to conclusions, I read the book BEFORE I saw the movie.

I thought the book was very good and would give it a 4 out of 5 stars, because I would describe it as a page-turner, full of excitement and adventure. It is one of those stories that at the end of every chapter I wanted to keep going to find out what happens next.  Normally, I have to put a book down after a chapter or two and get to the next chapter in a day or so, not this book.

**If you like the book, don’t get your hopes up on the movie.**

Melissa’s Take: 5 out of 5 stars

This book rocks! I’m a sucker for anything related to pop culture, and since this book immerses you into a world of 80s movies and video games, I couldn’t help but love it. Although I didn’t catch every reference because I’m a 90s baby, I still enjoyed this spin on a dystopian society where everything in life is centered around a virtual world. You can be whoever you want to be in Oasis, and it was fun to follow who the characters were in real life and this virtual world. What did bum me out was that one major corporation dictated the future of an entire population, which didn’t seem so far-fetched to me, especially because I read this as everything with net neutrality was going down. Either way, this book is action-packed, and even has some romance for the ladies! If you love science fiction and fantasy, or even just 80s pop culture, you won’t be able to put this down, which is why I give it a 5 out of 5 stars.

**And Joey and I are in agreement about the movie. Completely different references. Completely different timeline. But it still has the same feel. It’s just definitely not as great as the book. Movie gets 2.5 out of 5 stars.**

Happy reading, friends!