Such a sweet book, perfect for the burnt out, former-gifted-kid millennial struggling to figure out their difficult relationships with friends and family and decide on their next steps in life.

The characters were all so lovable, despite the book mainly focusing on their flaws, and the relationships so complicated and real, yet so wholesome. Grace's friendships were aspirational, making me long for similar friendships in my life.

This book touched on so many hard topics such as racism, discrimination, familial abandonment, mental illness, and burnout, and yet it was also so full of healing. The ending of the story was resolved in a really heartwarming way that brought everything full circle.

The book is broken into distinct segments in different settings that at first felt too disjointed. Grace moves a few times throughout the book and each new setting brings a new set of themes to Grace's focus, and I initially didn't like how stark the contrast was. At I got towards the end, however, I realized that the disjointedness I sensed mirrored Grace's mental compartmentalization, and I realized that the book's structure helped me to understand Grace more effectively, so I came to appreciate it.

I also really loved how the main character, Grace, loved science because of the beauty that comes along with studying. I read this book while simultaneously reading Braiding Sweetgrass and was pleasantly surprised by the two books sharing that theme, as it is a theme I too am drawn to as a quantitative social science who loves the beauty of operationalization and mathematical abstraction.

The imagery was really great, and I felt like I could imagine myself in every setting the book brought me to.