I am going to refrain from rating this because I can not tell if I didn’t like it because of the book itself, or for the fact that it was not written for me. I feel like this sits in a strange spot – it reads like a middle-grade, in terms of plot pacing etc, with the mature content of a young adult. It is short and tries to pack a lot into a little bit of space – not always a bad thing, but not something that was done successfully here.

While I do think the lyrical aspects are a good, accessible stepping stone to help young adults access and appreciate poetry, I don’t think this is enough to carry the story. Not enough space was given to allow for the natural development of the plot, instead the story line felt rushed and unrealistic. Which is a shame, because it is a brilliant concept.

The protag also never acknowledges or has his privileged checked – it is nothing but a burden (which in his case, sure), but there was space to really unpack the concepts of privilege, excess, fame and race, but those opportunities were not taken.

I read this via audiobook, which was both a great and terrible experience. The inclusion of the music was great, reminiscent of “Echo”. Then there were the parts of the book that were expressed as text messages or conversations, which were extremely disjointed in an audio context, and really took you out of the story. I don’t need time stamps for every like, 140 characters of a text. I don’t need a conversation to have the subtitle “conversation”.

The physical book looks to be a little over 300 pages, however the audio was only 4 hours. I think it could have benefited from being longer.