4 stars! This was the first book I’ve read by Akwaeke Emezi, and I don’t know how much of their writing style in this story was due to this being their YA debut but I really loved it! I’ve seen “darkly whimsical” be a descriptor floating around for this book and it fits a lot of the dialogue and Pet as a character very well. And Jam was really great trans representation(although I’m transmasc, not transfemme, I was happy to see it)!! And, for a relatively short book, Lucille was a fleshed out world of its own with the history to go along with it.

That, however, is where the problems lie: the worldbuilding is good, but takes up a chunk of the book. I wish that it was longer! That way we could have more time to properly explore the city of Lucille.