There are two different narrators, one for each POV, and one of them kept doing this gruff voice when the other MC was speaking, even though the narrator for that MC didn’t have a gruff voice at all. It felt like the two narrators didn’t really communicate about how to do each others voices, which kind of threw me off. I’d really like to read the digital version of this, the audio narrator was just bad 🥲

The author uses slurs in their essays while not being a part of either communities those slurs harm. Feels really weird and I don’t think it was necessary. 

I did not like the writing style

I might come back to this later. Something about it right now isn’t working out 

This was just super slow to build up and the combination of family drama + spooky thriller did not mix well for me. 
The FMC was also super annoying and felt like she was written by a man who has no concept of the term lesbian. 

I was having a hard time getting into it and just decided to DNF. I didn’t like any of the characters and the writing felt very inconsistent. 

This book is just giving me icky male dominated vibes and I get that is the point of the book is to show how toxic the military can be and force people into these mindsets, but there was an instance when a character punches someone (beats the literal shit out of them) for cracking a ‘homophobic’ joke that wasn’t even homophobic. Reacting to someone assuming you’re into men in such a violent way is the ACTUAL HOMOPHOBIA. Also not a fan of how women were viewed, again the characters are dealing with trauma but calling women whores, hookers, etc. because you have trauma is not an excuse………. 

Had to return to library 

Had to return to library 

The author (also narrator) has a very monotone and strong voice that made me feel like I was listening to case studies and was just way too direct. I do feel like much of the information and terminology used is outdated and could be revised for future use, however the author makes it a point to say ‘I use these words even though they are outdated because x, y, and z’ but it still feels lazy and redundant. I feel like it’s also important to mention the author is a white, ex-evangelical Christian who was raised in that restricting worldview so it’s hard to say that this book should surpass memoir and be a ‘basis for learning about being non-binary’. This is just one persons experience and while valid, shouldn’t be representative of the nonbinary experience altogether. There was some exclusion and linguistic wordplay that felt icky to me as well. Hopefully the author has learned more about community and the history of queer people and how intersectional our identities are.