Nothing Is Real by Kevin J. Kennedy | Book Review

Nothing Is Real by Kevin J. Kennedy is this author’s first non-horror tale that veers into some very dark existential territory.

Let’s dive in!

My Thoughts on Nothing Is Real by Kevin J. Kennedy –

When boxes arrive at this man’s front door, he finds a bunch of notebooks with writing inside. With seemingly no organization to any of the entries, and lacking dates on any of them, this man is consumed by reading to learn more about the writer.

This book is the result of a collection of notes in which our main character has attempted to organize the chaos.

So many topics are touched on. KJK has a killer way of taking everyday life elements and twisting them just slightly into something more intense when it calls for it, while leaving some things more surface-level in this book. One of the spookier ones for me was TikTok and the use of algorithms to tailor content and how dangerous that can be, as we’re seeing it play out in real time over very scary topics here in 2025. Another was cell phone usage and the addiction that has trained us to fill every second with stimulation from our phones.

In the middle of the tale, there’s a fun little easter egg for KJK fans when the character briefly mentions that he feels like a character in KJK’s story, Thirteen Voices. This is about halfway through and sheds a whole new light on this collection of notes!

The final section about the author… Such a fun touch!

My Favorite Passages from Nothing Is Real –

It might just be the case that I had no option in writing this book, and you had no option in picking it up. You were always going to. It was written in the stars as they say.

We have never had more information at our finger tips, and yet, I don’t see the masses using it to their advantage. If anything, the more information that is available to us, the more I think people on a whole are regressing. Stupidity has never been so prevalent. Maybe we have smoothed off too many of the rough edges in modern society.

I am not going online either. My brain needs no new information. I fear we were never meant to know as much as we do. We may have passed a point of no return.

If one thing exists in hell, it would as a minimum be unhappiness. It does make me wonder if this is hell. So many people are unhappy.

I wonder if anyone else feels like they are living through an already told story sometimes. I do. Sometimes I wonder if I have lived through it billions of times on repeat.

I hope you tell someone else about my book, and most importantly, I hope you use your time wisely. Cuddle a puppy. Have an ice cream. Tell someone cool you love them. None of us really have a clue what we are doing, or what happens next, so do what makes you happy.