Pretty decent and promising thriller that, for me, fell completely apart in the end due to the main character's overall stubborn stupidity. Like, I was fine with Nora's stubbornness and pride as character traits, but once shit started hitting the fan and she was still being stupid, I couldn't take it. She was dumb, and the ending was dumb, and HOW DIDN'T SHE SEE IT COMING??, and the explanation for why whodunit did it was so lame mostly because NORA WAS SHOCKED BY THE REVEAL. BECAUSE SHE'S SO FREAKIN DUMB.

At least I got to experience Imogen Church's fantastic audiobook narration!

A very readable mystery with not one likeable character at all. At first I thought I was in for a story of a psychotherapist who allows his obsession with helping this patient to ruin his life, but...nope. It ended up worse than that, with some absolutely awful therapy along the way, and

Spoiler

a plot twist that did absolutely nothing for the story as a whole

.

Holy fucking shit, this is brilliant.

This was just...really nice? Like a really well-needed little short story that deals with an existential crisis in a way that isn't entirely overwhelming or out of reach. If I were still in college, I would teach this in my Philosophy club. The world building of this future utopia was lovely, Dex was lovely, Mosscap the robot was lovely...it was just lovely, okay? My words are inadequate. Honestly, it's a wonderful novella.

The back cover has a blurb from Sarah Gailey that I at first thought was over the top, but once I finished reading, realized it was quite on the mark:

This is a book that, for one night, made me stop asking, 'What am I even for?' I'm prescribing a preorder to anyone who has ever felt lost. Stunning, kind, necessary."

I didn't get into Becky Chambers' Wayfarers series on my first try, but this has absolutely convinced me that I need to give it a second chance.