Actual rating is 3.5 stars

Let me start this off by saying HUGE trigger warning for trypophobia and body horror!! I wasn’t expecting for holes to be such a prevalent theme in this book, but ohhhhh boy it was. The characters’ bodies are literally sewn together with metal, so they’re covered in holes in their skin as a result. And one of the main characters, Key, deals with memory loss which she describes as holes in her consciousness, which made for some disgusting imagery. The word “holes” is mentioned SO many times in this book and it was revolting to me and honestly made it extremely difficult to get through this book, hence the rating being lowered to 3.5 instead of 4. I just couldn’t enjoy it as much as I otherwise would have because of the imagery in it

ANYWAYS, review time!

I’m not a huge sci-fi fan as is, but I absolutely loved The Abyss Surrounds Us so I wanted to give this one a try. I didn’t dislike it, I found it to be pretty interesting and well written, and I liked the characters and the world. But I also feel like it wasn’t quite as well developed as it could have been? Like we got a lot of world building and it was very well done, but I also feel like their should have been more. And with the characters, I loved the main four and we learned a lot about the deepest parts of themselves (their fears, their motivations, their purpose in life, etc.), but we didn’t get a lot of the more superficial stuff, which made it difficult to really grasp their individual personalities

As for the LGBTQ+ representation, I see what Skrutskie was going for but it didn’t quuuuite work for me. I’m all for casual queerness, normalized LGBTQ+ characters in novels is what I live for. But with this novel, it was literally only mentioned once and the never again. I know Skrutskie was not in the slightest intending to do this, but it felt to me like she was pulling a J.K. Rowling and only adding in diversity for the sake of looking good (again, I know that is NOT what Skrutskie was doing in the slightest, that’s just how it read to me). It kind of felt the same for all the diversity in this book; these characters were SO diverse and it was great, but other than Aisha’s religion it just wasn’t talked about at all. I don’t even remember what Praava and Wooj’s backgrounds are, like it literally wasn’t mentioned ever again after their initial introduction. Again, i completely understand where Skrutskie was going with this, it just didn’t quite work for me

Geez it sounds like I really don’t like this book by the way my review is going LOL. I swear I did like it quite a bit and would definitely recommend it if you’re into YA sci-fi. It’s a quick read, pretty entertaining. And it’s highly character driven rather than plot driven, which I personally really enjoyed