If you were hooked by how the Meme and the Word Exchange marketplace hollow out everyday speech and relationships in The Word Exchange, you’ll click with the äppäräts and rating-obsessed culture in Super Sad True Love Story. As Anana hunts for Doug amid a society sliding into aphasia, Lenny and Eunice try to love each other while feeds, rankings, and corporate metrics strip words—and people—of nuance. Both novels skewer our dependence on slick tech while showing the human cost when language turns transactional.

The word-flu outbreak that scrambles meaning in The Word Exchange has a thrilling cousin in Snow Crash, where Hiro Protagonist and Y.T. race to stop a neurolinguistic virus tied to ancient Sumerian. As Anana pieces together the plot behind the Word Exchange’s monetized vocabulary and her father Doug’s disappearance, Hiro uncovers a conspiracy that turns language into a mind-hacking tool. It’s the same propulsive blend of corporate machinations, memetics, and brink-of-collapse urgency.

Loved the way The Word Exchange weaves in Bart’s footnotes, dictionary entries, and clues while Anana searches for Doug? S. turns that pleasure into the whole puzzle. You’ll sift through the novel Ship of Theseus, margin notes between Jennifer and Eric, maps, postcards, and ephemera to unravel a missing author’s secrets. That same delight of decoding texts-within-texts—and following a disappearance through paper trails—drives the mystery forward.

If the philosophical shock of a society losing its grip on meaning—Anana watching word-flu dismantle thought while fighting to save a dictionary—stayed with you, Embassytown will mesmerize. Avice Benner Cho witnesses how the alien Hosts’ Language, which can’t lie, becomes a lever of power and addiction when altered by human Ambassadors. Like the conspirators behind the Word Exchange’s monetized lexicon, this novel shows language as the ultimate technology—and the fault line that can crack a civilization.

As The Word Exchange pits Anana against a shadowy scheme to control vocabulary through the Word Exchange app and ubiquitous Memes, The Circle follows Mae Holland into a tech giant whose “transparency” programs—like SeeChange cameras and perpetual sharing—tighten a velvet-gloved grip on public life. Both stories build tension from boardroom strategies and PR slogans that mask a takeover, turning personal freedoms (and words) into products.