The only thing that could have improved this book is if the audio was read by the authors of the essays.

check the triggers before reading this!

I really enjoyed this and even though I still don't know what happened at the end (I am writing this a couple of days after I finished reading) I have kept thinking about this book and definitely it will be going on my re read pile that I add special books too. The only reason it is not 5 stars is because I am not cleve enough to understand what the hell was going on. The mystery elements were just a little too complex for me I think but it was such a fun ride and It made me really think about what makes a human and what makes a relationship. 

Things I really enjoyed about this book are - It was clear the author wanted to show the realities of gender and sexuality, in particular when questioning your own or another persons gender or sexuality. The character names were kind of perfect and I loved the concept of the book. There was also some good representation of the experience of intrusive thoughts and how confusing they can make the experience of peopling. There was transgender rep too, although, having no experience of this I don’t know if it’s good rep or not. There’s also non binary rep that resonated somewhat. Finally, I really enjoyed the quotes at the beginning of each chapter. I am a sucker for a quote heading for chapters.

Thing’s I didn’t like - I often found the flow of the story confusing and it was quite a disjointed read. Things would happen very quickly with little to no warning so it was jarring and added to the confusion. There were also a few times that a character would refer to things like I would know what they’re talking about and I didn’t. For example, “ that day was…” I didn’t know what day they were on about. I could also have liked more of the magic and definitely more explanation and world building around the magic. There was a scene where there was two people having sex and one of the people was fantasising about another person which made me really uncomfortable. It felt like I was reading disjointed short stories instead of chapters.

This was my first experience reading something from S.T.Gibson and I had high expectations as I love a story set in an academic setting and I also really enjoy political games which was hinted at in the description. I had also heard great reviews of S.T.Gibsons previous book. I immersive read this book as I managed to get a physical copy as I ended up reading this after release date. 

I really enjoyed this book and am now looking forward to reading more from this author. Things I particularly enjoyed were the way the author managed to make the story feel very private. By this I mean that when I was reading it, I felt very much like I was in on the secrets and the experiences of these characters. The language and flow really allowed me to get lost in the story and I really cared about what was happening. Even when the characters were not particularly likeable I still wanted to know the outcomes of their actions. I also was routing for all of the characters at some stages of the story which is not an easy thing to achieve when the characters are representing something that humans don’t generally find easy to see as “good”.