Unfortunately a very disappointing read to me. I did not like any of the characters (which would be fine, since I don't think characters need to be necessarily be likeable), but I also found the plot boring and the pacing both moving too slow to be intruiging and too fast to make sense. I also did not enjoy the constant search for The Most Aesthetic Life, which caused most of the characters to feel both uninteresting to me and flat.
I might also just read too much horror to actually feel shocked by the "gruesome" torture scene in this book and so these scenes didn't phase me either, except leave me vaguely confused on why some of the scenes (such as the unusual cigar consumption) were necessary, except to show that all of these characters here kinda suck and don't really care for each other.
And most of all I did not care for the way this book treated its trans and butch characters while referencing Stone Butch Blues repeatedly. At points the butch characters were treated as potential sex offerenders or humiliated in a way that did not feel loving to me. (Plus the fact that the only trans characters in this book where transmasc afab butches... Yawn.)
The only black character in this book is treated horribly, there's constant fatphobia, the classicism and definition of femme as indulgent and through being able to afford thing is through the roof plus the aforementioned transphobia... All in all this is a book that I would have probably dnf-ed if I hadn't been able to borrow an audio book from my library. And looking back I wish I had still dnf-ed it, but the hype for the book and my own excitement for modern butch/femme dynamics made me push through. Definitely not worth it.