This book is lazily written, as is The Great Believers by the same author. It's clear with the short chapters, excessive dialogue, frequent line breaks, that Rebecca Makkai doesn't really know what she's writing. It's frustrating to read because she occasionally has really poignant, good sequences of writing, then goes back to dull descriptions of things nobody cares about. The things she chooses to focus on/analogize read weird.

The story for this book itself is boring and repetitive, because the central story has the bare minimum to be a murder mystery. Most of the book rehashes the same 5 plot points, the eventual reveal isn't shocking or satisfying, the dialogue is overused and doesn't add much but boredom. The characters aren't developed, the MC is super annoying tbh, the only character who uses they/them is quirky and has purple hair because... Obviously??

Another annoying part of her writing is her inability to go below surface level - just mentioning racism and sexism, cancel culture etc isn't enough to warrant a theme and just comes off as shallow. Instead of adding depth to the story it makes it look like she's writing for woke points, then starts talking about some other random thing.

This book seems pretty praised, so not sure what I missed. I didn't feel that fast paced or exciting vibe other reviews have. If anything it was worse than The Great Believers, which I didn't love but enjoyed a lot more. This'll probably be my last book from this author, I wish she could just take more time and make her writing more consistent, it would be much more interesting