Disclaimer: I received an e-copy of this book from the publisher in exchange for an honest review.

This book is about Sally, a girl with chronic depression, who just recently lost her job, has dropped out of college, hates parties and accidentally runs over a guy, who can travel through time and space causing him to lose the connection to his sister and leaving him stranded on earth. All of that might sound fun on the TV, but Sally's not a fan. After getting abducted by aliens and barely escaping, Zander, the alien, still won't leave her alone, saying he needs her to save earth. But Sally doesn't really mind all that much.

While this book is one of the best Sci-Fi Books I've read in a while it feels quite short. Now, this is most likely because this book is just the first in a series of quite a few other books, which I Need Now, I just would have loved a bit more world building. It still feels a bit flat and there are so many unanswered questions!!! But hopefully, the other books of the series will come out sooner rather than later so I can enjoy and love them as well. For now, we at least have this amazing first book and I can't wait for the next one!

The world building, while not enough, is actually quite good. There's a lot of alien races, but we only know a few so far, however they are all very diverse. I also really loved the idea that there is a big alien government that prohibits aliens from contacting earth as humanity is not developed enough yet. And considering how the other book ended, I'm sure we will get to know a lot more about aliens in the next books.

I also adored that Sally is bisexual, so far only by word of god (but it will be explored more in the next books, so far, however, there's already an important lesbian side character in this first book). While she is only dating one person in this book, her attraction to more than one gender is imho already hinted at quite well and I honestly can't wait to read more about her. She is also depressed and has anxiety and it's very well portrayed in my opinion, partly probably because it's ownvoices, which I honestly loved. I felt a bit disappointed that it isn't diagnosed and so she doesn't have any words for the way she's feelings, but it was still very well portrayed.

The story is very witty and fast paced and so goes by real quickly, but it is also a delight to read.

However, there are still some plot holes that are never explained (what happened with the hot air balloon? It is constantly mentioned but what was its purpose? It was simply mentioned so often that I couldn't believe there was no bigger purpose for it than to make Sally oversleep, but there where no other explanation for its existence which annoyed me a bit, as well as a fascinating character that was not at all explored even though she should have been? I mean why introduce interesting characters when they don't get explored? But again, there will be more books and the author said they will be explained so I'm just very excited for the next books!)

((There was one scene that really pissed me off and that was the terrible treatment of sex workers. Zander, clueless to human interaction apparently, picked up a sex worker on the street to bring on a date. When he didn't want to have sex with her, she got really angry and slapped him and afterward Zander was teased for trying to date a sex worker. This scene really made me angry and I had to put the book down for a while before I could continue. This treatment of sex workers is just really gross and while it may exist in real life as well, it was never called out and just felt very gross.)) UPDATE: I recently received the finished copy and this was fixed! I re-read this scene and it was handled so much more carefully and it was way better to read without being gross or dehumanizing. I'm so glad that this was fixed and I now have to say I enjoyed this story way more, thank you for listening to this and for fixing it.

I really, really loved the story, the characters, the great description of depression and most of what happens and since the scene that really upset me is fixed, I can finally rate this book higher and tell you to read it because it is amazing and funny sci-fi and really great.

Disclaimer: I received an e-copy of this book on NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

I really wanted to like this book. It speaks about really important things, like gender identity and obviously about being intersex and dealing with that, but Oh My God. There are so many problems.

First off: So Many Slurs. Honestly, if you can think of a derogatory slur for LGBT people: it's in there. While there are some parts of the story where these slurs are called out as words one shouldn't use, there is also the terrible passage where the good cishet boy Darren uses all the slurs, ranking which words LGBT people should have a reaction too (gay is ok but dippy, q**** is cute, lesbian is classy sounding and the only bad word is the f word) and it's supposed to make us like him? I wanted to DNF that book very badly at that moment. But shhh, he's definitely an authority on homophobic slurs because his dad is gay and he hated him for coming out, like he should have stayed in the closet so his son doesn't have to deal with his dad being happy :/, give him a hand, please!

There's a lot of homophobic/transphobic bullying going on in the book, a suicide joke, the predatory lesbian stereotype, the use of PTSD as a joke, rape jokes and trigger warning jokes bc uwu trigger warnings are a joke (both by the lovely white cishet dude, we are supposed to care about... sure...) and of course, the constant use of the H-Slur, which is the only slur the author addressed at the end of the book, but since she is not intersex I feel super weird about her reclaiming that slur. I mean I'm also dyadic, but why keep using slurs after explaining that it is a word that is derogatory towards intersex people? It just felt really bad.

There is also absolutely no mention of trans people or of trans intersex people and also nothing about nonbinary people. Especially the lack of awareness about trans people, when a lot of the character's slurs are directly targeted towards trans women was bad. The MC also constantly equates womanhood to having a vagina and a uterus (which is why she doesn't feel like a woman anymore). A lot of that is certainly because she is sixteen and not at all educated on LGBT issues, but it was not good to read. While she never outright states that she feels better than trans women, she definitely insinuates it a lot. The slurs used against her are wrong, because she is a woman, not because those slurs are words you shouldn't use. At least she's not trans. At least she doesn't have a penis. At least she has a vagina like a real woman. I mean seriously?

Then there is a scene where Krissy gets sexually assaulted and this worst case scenario is the thing that gets her out of her depression. Let me repeat that: Sexual assault is used as a catalyst for character development. Without any long-term issues. No, she goes on and gets a happy ending because being sexually assaulted taught her the meaning of life and that she had to accept herself being intersex. What. The. Fuck.

The writing wasn't that amazing either, the pacing was weird at times and the characters were flat.

I liked that there was one intersex girl who was a lesbian and I heard that the medical part of things was explained well, but honestly none of that can save this book for me.