Reviews and Comments

I had a lot of issues with this, but there were two that were the most eye-roll inducing:

- The main character was frustratingly "not like other girls". Her name is Gwendolyn but 'Gwen' is a "stupid" name so she goes by Lynn. She has a flashback in which she's riding a bike but it's "a six speed mountain bike. Not girly at all". I could go on, but I'll spare you
- The main character is specifically labelled as smart. As in, Lynn skipped a grade and was still smarter than everyone in her class BUT she's frustratingly oblivious to the blindingly obvious. I don't know if the author thinks the reader can't put two and two together or just forgot to make the main character make any logical assumptions?

There were interesting moments, and I enjoyed the choppy writing style that kept things moving relatively quickly. I think the large number of flashbacks messed with the pacing a lot, sometimes they worked, but a lot of times they felt like they were there as page fillers. I can see an audience for this for sure, but the hyper-masculinity throughout the book was tiresome for me personally.

It wasn't a terrible read, just deeply mediocre.

Maybe leaning towards a 3.5?

It took me some adjustment to get into this one but once I did I really enjoyed it. The cover and synopsis led me to believe this was a horror and although it has its creepy moments, it's more of a horror comedy. The characters are somewhat one dimensional and over the top, but they make sense as the cast of a reality tv show episode.

It lost me a bit towards the very end and I agree with everyone saying the ending was dumb. Luckily it didn't detract too much from my enjoyment of the rest of the book. It could have also used a bit more development of the side characters and the main character's growth felt a bit surface level and cheap. I did really like the main character for the most part because of how confident she is and I can always get behind a GNC character. I also really loved her frenemy-ship with Python!

Recommend for anyone wanting a horror on the fun side with plenty of comedy to break up the more tense moments.

[4.5]

You know it's good if I finished in less than 24 hours. I don't have a lot to say because there's no plot, just 300 pages of our nonbinary main character getting therapy and making friends. I think teens who are reading this might get more out of it than I did, which gives it some extra points in my rating.

I will note that the start is ROUGH. Take care of yourself if you read this because it opens with the main character coming out to their family and it going horribly wrong. Though the details are sparse, it still made me feel quite anxious reading it. There's also a lot of description of the main character having anxiety and panic attacks, especially with dissociation. They're very realistic (at least to my own experiences) so again, be careful. That said, I think that stuff being in there is good. There's a time and place for purely wholesome queer books, and then there's these that speak to the painful reality of being trans for many.

I expected it to be more of a romance going in, but I'm not disappointed that that was a fairly minor aspect. It's a heart-warming story of a kid's world being shattered and them learning how to pick up the pieces and as several of the blurbs say, I think this book can change and save lives.

I struggled through this and for WHAT.

Really cool premise and some interesting ideas, but despite its length it has far too much going on and was NOT the fun and fast paced thriller I was hoping for.

I went into this knowing it had mixed/bad reviews but I really wanted to like it. Immediately it had so many problems that I knew I was in for a rough ride. I have never taken this long to read a book under 300 pages, both in time actively spent reading and in time started to time finished.

There were too many characters and too many perspectives. The main character was not really the main character because of how little page time she had, how little impact she had on the story, and overall was not fleshed out enough. Structure wise it improves towards the end when the vast majority of characters are killed off (not trying to spoil, it's something you should expect going in). But it never felt clear. It's in 3rd person limited, but jumps between characters constantly (even in the middle of scenes, multiple times) and is jarring pretty much every time.

I was surprised the social commentary was something people enjoyed because it didn't even register for me until I read the author's note and even now don't think it was well-executed.

To really cement how I feel about this book, I didn't really feel anything at all. I definitely didn't feel any tension (because of how often scenes suddenly become exposition and flashbacks), not an ounce of creepiness, didn't care about any of the characters (except Brandon because I'm a sucker for himbos), and generally did not feel anything about anything that happened in this book at all.

I will freely admit that this isn't my kind of book and that I mainly read it in order to understand what people mean when they say "Kafka-esque"

So really my enjoyment of this story was about a 3/5 but I give it extra points for its originality and clearly very good writing. The ending was a little anticlimactic though.

I also really enjoyed it as an audiobook which kept the tone light. Otherwise there was a chance I may have interpreted it more as a horror. That said, that speaks to how interesting this is to read more as literary art than merely something to be enjoyed (even if it still to an extent can certainly be just enjoyed and not analysed).

I think this is a short but rich story to be used for book clubs or other literary analysis. Or just read it as a quirky magical realism short story!