Couldn't get into the story, nor did I like the format...but that's just me :) ( )

This one's got a good premise: a cult born out of the crushing loneliness that seems endemic to modern American life threatens to disrupt society. Unfortunately, it goes off the rails almost immediately, taking the reader on a wild ride that involves unsightly, elaborate disguises; tortured, unworkable family dynamics; CIA codebreaking; an ill-advised trip to North Korea; and the seedy underbelly of -- of all places -- Cincinnati, Ohio. Not all that much about how the cult in question -- the Helix -- salves its members loneliness is included here, which would seem to be a rather glaring omission, nor does the author venture too many theories about why Americans have come to feel so terribly alone. Even so, something kept me reading long enough to finish this one, and I think it was the books' characters. By this I mean mostly its bit players -- I found its central protagonists, Esme and Thurlow, to be pretty unbearable. But the lonely souls they come across in their adventures are worth spending some time with, interesting portraits of American lives that somehow turned out wrong. Sometimes "Woke Up Lonely" seems like a mediocre novel that has a good short story collection hiding in it somewhere, and it was worth sticking around for those bits.Not that it's enough for me to recommend it, though. ( )

I listened to this on audio and really hated it. Forced myself to listen to the end. Didn't like any of the characters and found the story disjointed, convoluted, and hard to follow. ( )