This is really 2.5 stars, but I am rounding up to 3. This was such a promising book, and I really liked Sloan's book Sourdough so I was eager to read this. It started strong, I liked the main character Clay, the writing was good, I had some laughs... And then things started to go wrong for me. The introduction of Kat- Clay's manic pixie dream girl object of affection- turned me off immediately (this is my least favorite trope in existence), but I was hoping she'd turn around or something. She did not. In fact as the book continued, I disliked the idea of her more and more.

To avoid spoilers, I will leave many of my other problems with individual characters alone, but I will say this: by the end of the book I had SEVERAL questions. I was lost several times. The plot didn't shift so much as it PIVOTED. I kept waiting for it to come together, but it kept getting more convoluted with the vast amount of characters, settings, plots, and even books within books.

I did find Penumbra endearing. It's a shame so much time was spent on characters I felt were unnecessary because I really would have liked more of him.