One of my first thoughts when the extremely brutal Debt Police make an appearance in The Payback was, “I hope no one in power reads this and gets ideas,” because like a lot of books with dystopian elements, The Payback should not be an instruction manual. Well, unless you’re rooting for the protagonist, Jada, and her friends, Audrey and Lanae, as they come up with a scheme to erase their student debt and take down the system as a whole. The novel shows how deep the problem of debt, especially student loan debt, runs and how difficult it can be to get out from under it. The Debt Police are a violent representation of how much debt can brutalize you and keep you down, adding a physical layer of demoralization, fear, and despair to Cauley’s critique of the current system, ultimately asking the question of whether we need to be paying so much for education (among other things) at all.
Cauley’s characters are well developed, entertaining, and smart, and the novel is a necessary critique of many elements of society. I highly recommend it!
Thank you to NetGalley for the ARC!