I adored this. I love awful characters, especially when the book is told from their point of view. Dr. Oliver Harding is a racist and a sexist, and just generally an all around terrible person. It's actually disgusting reading from his perspective sometimes. I love when you're reading from awful perspectives who are so good at justifying themselves. I want to understand their awfulness, and I want to know how their minds work. Jha did such a fantastic job with that here. Oliver Harding has no idea he's the villain of the book and it was wonderfully done.

The book is set around the 2016 presidential election and Dr. Harding embodies so much of the time. He distances himself from Trump and people spouting racist propaganda, while still wondering how a Muslim teenage boy was able to get a visa to visit his aunt in the United States, and if the government didn't do a thorough enough check. He holds double standards about his female colleagues and calls out racism ironically. It was a great portrait of the election set against a college backdrop.

The writing style is a little too pretentious for my taste, but the main character is an incredibly pretentious old school English professor so it works well. I didn't always like it very much, but I always appreciated the way it worked within the context of the book.

Honestly, the only thing I didn't really like was the ending. Not that it didn't work for the story, because it totally did, it just wasn't entirely to my tastes. I like things kind of understated and the ending leaned a bit into melodrama. It was still good, but I just didn't connect with it as much as I did other parts of the book.

This was fantastic overall and so close to a five star for me. Highly recommend if you like awful main characters and social commentary wrapped up in a thrilling story.