I only got 60 pages into this and I don't know if I've ever been so angry reading a book. The main character is insufferable and the twist (which I looked up) makes it even worse. I'm glad I didn't waste any more time than I did.

DNF p. 258

I tried so hard to like this book, but it just wasn't working for me. The concept is great and this would have been a good book if the world building and characters were executed better. Nothing about the plot or writing style was engaging enough for me to keep reading. I appreciate the concept and diversity and I liked some of the characters, but I was mostly disappointed.

I was flying through this and really enjoying the writing and the characters until about half way through. The plot started getting really convenient and all the characters were making stupid decisions, which bothered me because we're told that they're smart. The characters did things that should not have been possible in the context. It was clear that the author either didn't do enough research on how big companies work or chose to use inaccurate assumptions to make the plot possible. That may not have bothered me as much if the characters motivations had made sense, but it was still a glaring issue for me and would have bothered me either way. I also started noticing how cheesy some of the dialogue is. I get why people love this, it was just impossible for me to connect once the plot convenience/technical issues came up so it wasn't worth finishing for me.

I didn't finish this mostly because of the writing. It reads like a 40 year old trying to imitate how teens talk and think. I cringed at so much of what I read of this, especially the dialogue. There were also some things that happened that just didn't sit right with me. None of these are spoilers, but if you don't want to know any details about this book, you might not want to read on. There was one scene where a friend of Max's said he knew Max was gay because he slept with a boy, which is bi/pan erasure and is never addressed. That on its own wasn't that big of a deal to me, but then the only black character in the book, Pam, was portrayed as being overdramatic and lying about microaggressions. Jordan clearly doesn't believe her when she claims someone gave her a weird look and implies it was about race. This undermines the real microaggressions black people face, in my opinion, but take what I say about race as a white person with a grain of salt. The last straw for me was when Jordan tells his friends that Max is gay without asking him who he wants to be out to or whether or not he's okay with that. I just got to a point where there was nothing I was enjoying enough to continue, especially with these little issues I noticed.