''The Compound'' by Aisling Rawle, the author's debut novel, is our "GMA" Book Club pick for July.
The story follows Lily, a bored and beautiful twenty-something who joins a wildly popular reality show set in a remote desert. To win, she must outlast 19 other contestants by surviving in the Compound the longest, competing in challenges for luxury items like champagne and lipstick, as well as essentials to outfit their communal home, such as food, appliances and even a front door.
'Atmosphere' by Taylor Jenkins Reid is our 'GMA' Book Club pick for June"Cameras are catching all her angles, good and bad, but Lily has no desire to leave: why would she, when the world outside is falling apart?" a synopsis reads. "As the competition intensifies, intimacy between the players deepens, and it becomes increasingly difficult to distinguish between desire and desperation."
"When the unseen producers raise the stakes, forcing contestants into upsetting, even dangerous situations, the line between playing the game and surviving it begins to blur. If Lily makes it to the end, she'll receive prizes beyond her wildest dreams -- but what will she have to do to win?" the synopsis continues.
"The Compound" offers a chilling, addictive look at how entertainment, control and survival collide when the cameras never stop rolling.
Read an excerpt below and get a copy of the book here.
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This month, we are also teaming up with Little Free Library to give out free copies in Times Square and at 150 locations across the U.S. and Canada. Since 2009, more than 300 million books have been shared in Little Free Libraries across the world. Click here to find a copy of ''The Compound" at a Little Free Library location near you.
Read along with us and join the conversation all month on our Instagram account, @GMABookClub, and with #GMABookClub.
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In the morning the boys still hadn't arrived, and we started to worry. I opened my eyes -- the first to wake, again -- and reached for a phone that wasn't there.
I woke up properly then, and looked around at all the other girls sleeping soundly.
I couldn't see them well in the dark, and I seemed to have forgotten most of their names.
The small trace of familiarity from the night before had vanished, and I was reminded that they were strangers to me.
In that moment I would have given anything to have gone home.
I padded through the house, checking for any changes. In the living area, the screen was still blank.
I walked outside, and fancied that I would see the boys waiting for me by the pool. But there was no sign of them.
It might have been peaceful outside -- all that flat, pale land stretching out into the distance -- but I disliked the extreme quiet, and went into the kitchen, where I made coffee while keeping an eye out the window.
Then I made a huge pan of scrambled eggs and wolfed down what I judged to be a moderate amount.
I thought of how ugly I must look on the cameras, stuffing my face alone in the kitchen, my hair unbrushed, my face not yet washed. I finished eating as quickly as I could.
When I returned to the bedroom, the other girls were awake. They had been talking, but stopped when I walked in.
Mia looked at me with wide eyes. "There you are," she said. "We didn't know where you had gone."
"I got coffee," I said.
"Why did you get up before everyone else, though?" "I don't know," I said. "I just woke up."
"Were you just wandering on your own? That's so weird," Mia said. "No," I said. "I just made breakfast. I made eggs for everyone."
"Thanks, Lily," Jacintha said. "That was really thoughtful." I met her eye, and felt a profound rush of gratitude for her, as though she had stopped me from falling off a cliff.
After we ate, we took our coffees to the outdoor dining area. There were no chairs, and we stood self-consciously, leaning against the wall, hips cocked.
It was difficult to know how to plan our day. We decided to go back to preparing the house in the morning; we could spend the afternoon relaxing and getting to know each other.
Cleaning was hard in the heat, particularly in the kitchen, where the temperature was so extreme that we were forced to take frequent breaks, sprinkling our faces and necks with water.
When we were done, we changed into our bikinis and got into the pool.
I noted the relative flatness of everyone's stomachs, and found that, while Sarah had the most toned abs, I was a sure contender for the shapeliest hips.
The pool was enormous; even with the ten of us in at the same time, there was still room left for about fifty refrigerators.
We were not as reserved as we had been the day before; we did handstands and splashed each other.
Mia and Eloise raced each other, and I swam as deep as I could, keeping my eyes open under the water and navigating around the blurry shapes of the girls' legs.
But where were the boys? As we lay in the shade, snacking on tortilla chips and guacamole, I wondered if they had been hurt.
Four years ago one of the boys had broken his leg on the way to the compound and had been stranded for twelve hours before the show's execs got to him.
It would have taken less time but he had said, over and over, that he didn't want anyone to come get him and that he could make it to the compound eventually. He was taken home immediately.
I knew I was going to drive myself mad with thinking, and asked Jacintha if she wanted to play ping-pong.
It was tucked around the side of the house, and we played for a while -- I think probably an hour. There was a ball but no paddles, so we played with our hands.
I thought that Jacintha was a relaxed kind of person, but she became tremendously competitive once we started to play.
She liked to do victory laps of the ping-pong table while I crouched on the ground to retrieve the ball.
"What time do you think it is?" I asked her between sets. She pointed above us, at the sun.
"It's hard to be sure, but I think around three or four. It's definitely the afternoon." She came to stand beside me and pointed up, again.
"See?" I nodded, but I didn't understand precisely how she knew.
For me, the sun was just the sun. She turned to face me.
She wasn't wearing sunglasses, and only minimal makeup, and her face was clear to me. "Do you think any of the boys will be Black? There's usually one, but not always."
"Maybe," I said. I thought about it, then said, "I'm sure there will." "If it's all white boys, I'm screwed," she said. "The white boys never go for the Black girl."
"You're stunning," I said. "Any of the boys would be lucky to have you."
"You think?" she said, and twisted her earrings around. "Well, you have nothing to worry about anyway. Is that your natural hair color?"
I laughed. "What do you think?"
We went back to the lawn, where the majority of the girls were sunbathing. "Where were you?" Mia asked. "Why are you always disappearing?"
"We were playing ping-pong," I said. She looked like she didn't believe me. What could I say? We were playing ping-pong.
Jacintha and I took a seat a little bit away from her, and Candice came over and sat cross-legged on a cushion beside us.
Candice had changed out of her swimsuit and into a crochet dress patterned with pretty greens and blues. She wore her long, thick hair in a high ponytail.
I could see the beads of sweat on her neck. "Don't worry about Mia," she said. "She'll lighten up once the boys get here."
Some of the girls had decided that they would make dinner for everyone.
They went inside, intent on their task, and I felt impressed by their industriousness.
All I could think of doing was getting cool. Eventually lying about got boring too, and Jacintha asked me to help her sort out some kind of makeshift door for the bathroom.
I've always been useless in these kinds of situations: I don't have any sort of mechanical understanding.
I've never assembled furniture myself, and I've never voluntarily looked inside the bonnet of a car.
But Jacintha seemed to know what she was doing, and I encouraged her and made affirmative noises.
In the end, she just hung a sheet over the doorframe. It was easy to move and provided a degree of privacy that we could live with, for now.
When dinner was ready, we ate tacos outside and covered our mouths as we spoke.
I got the impression that everyone was saving their more interesting talking points for when the boys came; I know I was.
Jacintha sat next to me, and I was glad that we were becoming friends.
She was nice, and smart, too.
Already the ten girls had split into two cliques: throughout the day, Vanessa, Sarah, Melissa, Becca, and Eloise had kept to themselves, cleaning upstairs and eating lunch by the swings, and at dinner they sat a little apart too.
Privately, I thought that the second group -- comprising Candice, Susie, Jacintha, Mia, and myself -- was the better one.
The other girls were boring and had nothing much to add to a discussion. Mia, glancing at them, remarked, "Vanessa's the only one of them who's pretty, anyway."
We were slightly more tense that night, and some of the girls were impatient with each other, interrupting or rolling their eyes. We drank more than we had the first night, too, and struggled to find things to talk about.
Only Susie remained enthusiastic; I don't think the fact that there was a sort of gag placed on our conversation topics bothered her at all.
Susie could talk about anything.
"I don't even want the boys to come," she said. "We're having so much fun without them."
We went inside eventually, to shower and to tend to the burns that we had accumulated.
I had a long, red burn running up the length of my arm from when I had fallen asleep in the sun.
We lathered aloe vera on each other, until the room smelled sharp and sweet, and we walked around with slow, hesitant steps.
I slept poorly, waking constantly. I kept curling my arms under my chin in my sleep, and then wincing myself awake.
Eventually I lay like a starfish on my back, listening to the cool rush of the air conditioning and the even breathing of the other girls.
The following morning, the boys arrived.
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Audio excerpted with permission of Penguin Random House Audio from THE COMPOUND by Aisling Rawle, read by Lucy Boynton.
From the book "THE COMPOUND" by Aisling Rawle. Copyright © 2025 by Aisling Rawle. Published by Random House, an imprint and division of Penguin Random House LLC. All rights reserved.
