This is what I get for judging a book by its cover. 

 

Listen, I started this in good faith. And the beginning felt promising and interesting. But by the halfway point I knew I’d be finishing this out of spite. So take this lackluster review with that in mind. 

 

The writing style is fine, and I liked the audiobook narrator for this. But my god, it’s been a while since I’ve read something so annoyingly privileged and full of white lady shit. The book’s unnamed narrator drags us through 2020 and early 2021, during the heights of the COVID pandemic and forces us to relive it through her depressed, condescending, sex-deprived lens. I thought I would be getting more classical Greek prophecies and the parallels between that and our present day world. Which would at least be INTERESTING. While there were some mentions of that, I was overwhelmed instead with the narrator’s complaints that felt more and more like a vehicle for our author to complain about the world. And if you’re not bringing anything new to the table or a remotely nuanced take, then what is the point? I would recommend journaling instead of publishing. If this was meant to be some kind of satire or self-criticism, then the author should’ve done that more clearly. I feel as if I'm giving her too much credit for even entertaining that possibility. 

 

The minute our narrator expressed sympathy with anti-maskers and asked have we not felt conspired against before (followed by some dribble that in no way acknowledged privilege, racism, or systems of injustice), I felt violently reminded about the background of who was writing this book. And it just kept happening. Every time she starts to mention something interesting that feels like it might go somewhere, it ends. This book is full of nothing but shallow observations that reveal the author’s either lack of knowledge or desire to dive deeper.