A Lyft driver who would much rather be at home streaming on Twitch pulls up to find a woman around his age sitting in a parking lot with a large black box. The woman (Ether) offers the driver (Abbott) $200,000 to load up the box and drive her and it across the country from California to a Washington D.C. area suburb in time for the Fourth of July holiday in a few days. But there are certain things he must agree to: no phone, laptop, or GPS. No questions about or looking in the box. No one can know about what they are doing, why they are doing it, or where they are going. Suspicious but unable to find a way to say no to the increasingly desperate woman, Abbott agrees, leaving a cryptic video on his Twitch channel and a note for his father before the trip begins. What seems like an exceedingly strange but straightforward job quickly escalates into a cross-country manhunt fueled by rumor, speculation, and conspiracy theories.

I’m Starting to Worry About This Black Box of Doom is a book that defies easy classification. It has humor and action, suspense and mystery, family conflict and untraditional friendship. Author Jason Pargin also uses his pages to write about our current culture at the extremes, how much has changed in culture and society, and the arguments offered that we are better off or on the edge of annihilation.

The book is likely longer than it needs to be. Maybe Pargin goes on too long at times, expounding on conspiracy theories and using his characters to explain diverging viewpoints on deeply divisive topics. It feels like a little much at times. Even so, the story is propulsive and interesting–even if you just want to finally find out what, exactly, is in the black box.

Thank you to NetGalley and St. Martin’s Press for the advance reader’s copy of this book in exchange for my honest thoughts and opinions.