starrysteph's Reviews (471)

Tale of the Flying Forest feels like returning home: I could have been eight years old again, snuggled under a blanket while completely losing myself in this fantastical world and imagining myself in the heroine’s shoes. It’s magical, cozy, hopeful, and deeply Jewish.

Anne Applebaum feels totally alone after her mother dies and her father doesn’t know how to connect with her. All she has are memories of her mother, her Jewish faith, and a worn copy of The World to Come, all about the flying forest of Bei Ilai. 

She’s always felt a faraway tug, and one day a talking raven lets her know that she has an actual other half - a twin brother named Rainer - whose heart has been broken and scattered across the very real Bei Ilai. Anne must travel into the magical world and become one of the heroes whose stories and bravery once brought her so much comfort. But there are villains and monsters and curses to overcome, and the most dangerous creature of them all was once a hero himself.

The slightly-whimsical (friendly, but distanced) narration is perfectly captivating and made it easy to immerse myself in this fairytale. And the scattered illustrations are delightful, bringing a few emotional moments to life before my eyes. 

Anne is a wonderful protagonist. She’s not perfect - she has moments of doubt and moments of lashing out - but she’s so compassionate and determined. Once she finds out her brother exists, she never backs down on her quest to bring him home. And she never takes the selfish route, either: she’s always keeping her community and home in mind.

Villains and heroes sometimes intersect here, and though the main antagonist is ultimately unredeemable, we’re shown the ways in which cruelty develops and how everyone wants to love and be loved. Although the characters are clearly friends or foes, it’s never completely black and white.

The Jewishness of this story is unapologetic and so wonderful to read about. There are real Jewish prayers that become magical songs, and elements of inspiration from the Torah (as well as Jewish mysticism) sprinkled throughout. Anne’s faith is a source of strength and magic, and that was so comforting and hopeful. You’ll also recognize reshapings of some popular fairy tales and folklore elements. 

There is darkness in Anne’s story, especially in her grief and in her struggle to connect with her father after her mother leaves a huge hole in their home. There’s also suffering in Bei Illai that Anne has to reckon with (and help heal). I think any child who has experienced loss will see a piece of their sadness and personal journey with grief reflected here. I definitely teared up a few times. 

But oh - the magic of this world, and the love and friendship and family! It was beautiful, and ultimately this is a bright and hopeful story. It’s about reshaping the world to be a bit better. And leaving a trail of goodness behind you. The concept of tikkun olam is one of my favorites in Judaism, and it was such a strong theme here. 

The characters and creatures were endearing, the message was heartwarming, and the story feels like an old friend. I very strongly recommend!

CW: murder, death (parent), grief, child abuse, war, injury, violence

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(I received an advance reader copy of this book; this is my honest review.)

Masquerade is one woman’s unwilling journey into the political and power-hungry world of nobles in a reimagined 15th century West Africa. It’s dark, gripping, and deliciously morally gray.

Òdòdó is on the outskirts of society as a blacksmith, struggling to survive alongside her mother and the rest of their blacksmith guild. One day, an act of kindness for a vagrant leads to her abduction across the desert and to the capital. And Òdòdó’s captor? It’s the vagrant, who turns out to actually be the king of Yorùbáland.

Her life changes overnight as she becomes his wife-to-be and becomes part of the politically savvy community in the city. Òdòdó is naive, but there’s power for her here, and she can’t turn away. She must discover who her true allies are and learn to become a manipulator herself … before her enemies get their way.

This is not a revolutionary tale - there’s no reshaping of society here. Instead, we watch Òdòdó grow and learn and discover how she can take the tools she has and craft her own freedom. She’s sometimes frustratingly innocent at the start of the story, but once she starts learning how to use her prison to her advantage it’s hard to look away. 

The writing is clear and engaging. It painted such a crisp picture of Yorùbáland and I appreciated how we were sometimes able to discern the bigger picture (as readers) while still seeing things from Òdòdó’s limited viewpoint and feeling her confusion, anger, and adoration. 

Òdòdó fights ferociously for power, but even when she attains it she still acknowledges that she is imprisoned. She didn’t choose any aspect of her life, and even though she is supposed to have been elevated from her former status as a blacksmith, she also loses some of the small freedoms she did have. It’s very much a gilded cage, but one that she learns how to take advantage of. Her world is brutal, and it’s fascinating to watch her learn how to play political chess within the confines of being a commoner bride. 

My one stumble here was that I wish we got more of a look into the various antagonists and their backgrounds. They fell a little flat for me at times, and I wanted a deeper understanding of the world and their clashing motivations. But since Òdòdó has a very limited knowledge base about them, so do we.

This is a story of survival. With rich characterization & culture and stomach-churning political maneuvers, I couldn’t look away.

CW: murder, kidnapping, violence, slavery, war, death (parent), blood, injury, misogyny, toxic relationship, gore, fire, animal cruelty/death, gaslighting confinement, trafficking, classism, body horror, abuse, vomit, sexual violence, infertility, homophobia, colonization

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(I received a free copy of this book; this is my honest review.)

Mexican Gothic was a dark & rich tale filled with rot, cyclical violence, and a protagonist who never stops pushing back & fighting. 

Noemí is a chic & stubborn socialite, spending her days at parties while hoping for her father’s permission to study anthropology at graduate school. She loves her life in the city, but when she receives a very strange letter from her newlywed cousin begging for her help, Noemí heads off to the countryside. 

The town is isolated, the house is strange, and her cousin’s new family is even stranger. Noemí won’t back down, but when she starts getting uneasy visions and the walls feel like they’re closing in, she has to fight for herself and Catalina. She starts to unearth the dark history of High Place while doing her best to avoid its seduction and escape with her life. 

Noemí’s characterization is so sharp, and she’s a great character to root for. She is flawed, but I found her deeply loveable. She’s incredibly self aware and acknowledges her weaknesses, but it’s clear that she’s smart and savvy and not the type to give up. The one stumble with her is that we were often told about Noemí’s past and her qualities before experiencing her stubbornness and cleverness through her current actions. She’s determined to rescue every single person in distress, and we didn’t need any level of handholding to figure that out as readers.

There’s an obsession with circularity here, and we’re watching cycles of pain and trauma - seeing our villains cling to old rotting and withered life instead of embracing change and growing with the world. Colonization and eugenics are explored as living, breathing, insidious rot. And the cycle is infused with new pain each time it laps back around. 

I’m always drawn in to stories that blend true, realistic horror with supernatural elements, and this was no exception. I actually would have loved more building horror and tension – it felt like we jumped from zero to one hundred really quickly. It went from nothing is wrong/it’s definitely just my imagination to here is exactly what’s wrong and I’ve got to escape in just a chapter. 

I did adore the descriptions of the home and grounds and family members. You really sit in that sense of grossness and morbidity. I could almost smell the rot through the pages, and imagine the uneasiness of the rooms and how ‘off’ the family and staff were. 

The ending felt a bit abrupt to me. I would have enjoyed slightly more of a conclusion and to witness the survivors return to where it all began, but with a refreshed perspective. I’m also not totally sure I believed Francis’ arc, considering his life and upbringing in the home. 

Overall, though, this was a fantastic, spine-tingling read with rich imagery. Definitely my favorite of the SMG books I’ve read so far. It’s vivid and disturbing and darkly clever. 

CW: body horror, death (child), murder, incest, racism, violence, classism, sexism, sexual assault, gore, confinement, gaslighting, cannibalism, pedophilia, infertility, miscarriage, eugenics, epidemic, colorism, chronic illness, slavery, xenophobia, vomit

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Death of the Author is a clever & meta blend of sci fi and contemporary fiction that explores the life-altering power of storytelling, agency over your own narrative, and who stories truly belong to.

Zelu is ready to celebrate her sister’s wedding when two terrible bits of news drop at once: she’s fired from her teaching job and her novel is rejected once again. Her family both judges and pities her for being disabled and now completely unemployed, and Zelu feels all of her dreams slipping away.

But as she mopes miserably in her hotel room, she’s suddenly struck with inspiration. She drops everything to write a science fiction novel about robots and AI left on a human-less world, and that novel becomes a smash hit and reshapes her life. 

We watch Zelu’s unexpected fame rollercoaster ride and get tidbits of the famous novel interspersed with her reality. Zelu experiences some extreme highs and lows in her own life, and both narratives slowly start to morph together and feed off of each other.

How much ownership do you truly have over the stories you craft? Once you release that spark that contains so much life, does it take on its own power? Can technology and humanity coexist and empower each other?

Zelu comes to life on these pages with such clarity and intention and specificity that it is sometimes difficult to remember that she is fictional. She’s a hurricane and pushes back against every expectation someone places on her. After she falls out of a tree playing a game as a child, she becomes paralyzed and uses a wheelchair. She still grapples with some internalized ableism (and a lot of ableism from others) as an adult, especially because she had to reshape her hopes and dreams for the future.

Her family pushes and prods her in often toxic ways. They sometimes infantilize her and don’t actually listen when she attempts to express herself, they sometimes seem to place her in a lazy stoner box, and they sometimes are over-the-top reactionary and are enraged when she pushes a new boundary.

Zelu leans in and frustrates them in turn. She is a bit mercurial and selfish and doesn’t always ‘see’ her family members as full and complicated humans with their own lives. If they aren’t immediately accepting of her ideas, they become her enemies. In general, though, the family drama & trauma are a significant portion of the book.

Her identity also ties into being Nigerian and American. She spent many childhood summers in Nigeria, but after her accident her family is wary of her going, and after her fame they outright forbid it. Zelu’s book (called Rusted Robots) is set in a futuristic version of Nigeria (mostly Lagos). She fights to force others to acknowledge her full identity, and is furious when people try to remove the Nigerian setting of her book and westernize it. 

But once Zelu’s book enters the world, she has no control over its path and how others interpret and define it. It becomes its own breathing thing and works its way through readers. The weird web of writer vs. art vs. audience is explored with a lot of detail, and I leaned into those conversations, even when Zelu was forced to become pricklier and things became divisive in those relationships. This web is so meaningful but also so toxic, and the cycle gets messier once there’s a film adaptation, Zelu discovers fanfiction, Zelu blows up in an interview, and beyond. Her experience with her comment section feels very real.

I enjoyed reading the segments of Rusted Robots and was engaged with the story. I do think it’s set up in a tough way, because we are told it’s an instant bestseller and has taken the world by absolute storm, and I wasn’t quite blown away in THAT way by what we got. But it was crucial for those chapters to be included, and there is a certain suspension of disbelief that has to happen overall here.

There are interesting subplots around love and loneliness, as Zelu finds a possible committed partner but is wary to let anyone fully in. Tech is - unsurprisingly - a huge theme here. Zelu has the opportunity to walk again through brand new robotic legs, she uses an AI app that filters news and comment sections among other things, and she also takes self-driving cars (a new technology that many folks are wary of in her slightly-futuristic version of Chicago). Her family is afraid of and appalled by these things, but Zelu sees them as an extension of herself and really tries to add a human touch to the technology.

There is an Elon Musk character that Zelu engages positively with (should that be a content warning at this point? oof) and the book reads a little … pro-AI? There are visions of beautiful human and AI collaboration, but not really any thought given towards the warning or the trampling of human vision or creativity. This and the abundance of hot topics covered were stumbles for me and messed with the pacing and overall arc of the story. 

But this is truly imaginative Africanfuturism. You will have a lot to meditate on after finishing. 

CW: death (parent), ableism (sometimes internalized), grief, racism, panic attacks, gun violence, toxic relationship, medical content/trauma, war, violence, body shaming, pregnancy, kidnapping, gaslighting, sexism, transphobia

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(I received an advance reader copy of this book; this is my honest review.)

I mostly think The Full Moon Coffee Shop was an excuse to info dump about astrology - but you know what? It was kind of nice. 

The book is broken up into sections, each from a different narrator coming across the migrating coffee shop (which is run by human-sized talking cats who may or may not be literal planets). They’re served drinks and snacks that are exactly right for them at that moment and given advice about their astrological chart and current life struggles. Each person is at a crossroads and is feeling restrained or unhappy.

The cat content was cute, and all of the cafe goers had majorly intersecting lives. The writing was simple and direct. It wasn’t anything terribly unique or deep, but it was an easy little read and a chance to learn some new astrological facts. 

It left me feeling a bit reflective and relaxed. I appreciated how it all tied together in the end, but there just wasn’t enough depth to the story to truly engage me.

CW: death, infidelity, gaslighting, sexism, fatphobia, transphobia, homophobia, misogyny

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Lucha of the Forgotten Spring was a lovely end to the Lucha Moya duology, with themes of community care & responsibility, addiction, environmental respect & destruction, faith, leadership, and trust.

Lucha returns to her hometown after the most intense battle of her life. She has to learn to lead and rebuild, while making sure that the deadly drug she sought to destroy never haunts her community again. But the forest isn’t at peace quite yet, and the villagers of Robado face new dangers.

I continued to enjoy the thoughtful conversations around community and leadership. Lucha learns when to take charge and when to lean back - and everyone has to learn to communicate effectively and work together to build a better home. There are battling leadership styles at play and a whole lot of different motives, and it was interesting to see how different personalities meshed and fought for personal and communal interests. 

Everything here was richer and deeper. Just a really great expansion on book one! The pacing was a little funky (some big scenes FLEW by while we lingering in some quieter conversations for a while), but I was engaged the whole way through. 

I’m not one to care for a love triangle, but I thought both potential love interests were believable and the plot didn’t lean too heavily on any fighting between them. They were both just part of Lucha’s journey to forge a better world and future for herself and her loved ones.

I missed Lucha’s sister Lis in this one, though! Sisterhood was such a large part of book one and their relationship really resonated with me, so that was an aspect I was sad fell away here.

The ending was satisfying, but not TOO neat. There’s a lot left open and so many ways these stories could end.

Overall, I think that if you had a good time with book one then you’ll be very happy with this conclusion!

CW: death (child/parent), drug use, addiction, violence, confinement, body horror, grief, animal death, classism, fire

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(I received a free copy of this book; this is my honest review.)

Women with dreams of vengeance? We love to see it. Go after those eyes, Ji-won! Take control away from men!

The Eyes Are the Best Part is an unsettling journey about a young woman who becomes a serial killer once her disgust and frustration boil over into free-flowing rage at the racist & sexist men who surround her.

 Ji-won is constantly standing on unsteady ground. She loves her mom, but her dad abandoned their family after an affair and her mother simply crumples. Her little sister is scared and hurt, just wanting things to be okay. 

When a new man enters their apartment, Ji-won’s distaste grows and grows. George is sexist, racist, condescending, and generally obnoxious, but what Ji-won can’t stop fixating on is his bright blue eyes. And what it would be like to eat them.

Her dreams get darker and more compelling, and even as her grades suffer and her friends become wary, Ji-won’s hunger cannot be stopped.

It’s a disgusting and fascinating little tale about removing yourself from the boundaries of fate and choosing your path forward, no matter what ending the world has in store for you. Ji-won ponders whether her future is really set in stone, but she leans into violence to escape the expectations of society (and specifically of men). I’ll always gobble up an unhinged woman saying, “You know what? Fuck it. Let’s just destroy the world.”

Is Ji-won always sympathetic or likeable? Absolutely not. But I think part of the charm is seeing how much you feed into her mindset before she shifts into horror and violence.

The chapters are short and segmented, with lots of little dream sequences and famished visions. They’re sometimes abrasive and feel like rough blinks, especially as you start to wonder just how well you can trust Ji-won.

Ji-won’s family struggles were deep & heart-wrenching. They each deal with micro and macro aggressions and fetishization towards Asian women, and dreams versus realities of living in America, and just how much of their lives are out of their control. The web of relationships between mother and father and daughters were well-developed. And Ji-won’s place as the elder daughter who sometimes serves as translator, sometimes serves as protector, and often just has too much stacked on her shoulders is so relatable.

Were the murders believable and without plot holes? Eh, not really, but who cares? The male antagonists did feel a little bit flat & cliche at times (cardboard cutout villains) - which bored me a tad just because I think it would have been more intriguing to disguise their nastiness at the start - but overall this has a very fresh spin on eye horror and cannibalism.

For a “good for her” reading moment mixed in with navigating the beginning of adulthood while shouldering family trauma, be sure to pick this one up.

CW: cannibalism, body horror, murder, death, gore, racism & slurs, violence, blood, misogyny, stalking, abandonment, toxic friendship, sexual harassment, mental illness, cultural appropriation, infidelity, grief, pedophilia, panic attacks, gaslighting, torture, classism, excrement, vomit, cancer

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Lucha of the Night Forest is an action-packed sapphic fantasy filled with forest magic, feuding gods, and sisterhood.

Lucha lives in Robado, a grim city filled with struggling folks pinned between a salt river and an angry forest. Her mother (alongside most of the city) is addicted to a memory-altering drug called Olvida, and her daughters never know when (or if) she’ll return home. Lucha makes ends meet for herself and her little sister Lis by taking monster bounty jobs from a former friend & neighbor.

But when his demands become too high and the girls are threatened out of their home, Lucha has one option left: she begs El Sediento, a god of rot & hunger, for a deal. Alongside the secret-goddess-worshipper Paz, she transports Lis across the forest and to a hopefully better future. Though Lucha still must hold up her end of the bargain, and she doesn’t know what to make of a new power rising up through her blood.

Lucha is so determined to protect her sister, even when Lis lashes out and struggles to see the bigger picture. Their relationship is complicated and their bond is fierce – it’s an honest depiction of sisterhood. Lucha overcomes so much and her motivation is very centered around crafting a better world that her sister can thrive in. It’s a trope that always tugs at my heartstrings. 

Robado is a city revolving around drugs and addiction. The few in power use Olvida to manipulate the masses, getting richer while the residents crave more and more of the mind-numbing plant. Lucha dreams of destroying the drug, but also harbors complicated feelings for her mom, who is a user. She’s angry and doesn’t know how to fix things, and leans into anger while her new friend (and maybe more) Paz leans into compassion and patience. It’s a brutal look at capitalism, control, and power – and how to fight and dismantle these violent systems. 

I really enjoyed the forest as a living, breathing system. You’re always going to hook me with some mycelium magic! Each vine, every flower, and every root is connected here, and leaps off the page. There are terrifying monsters and overwhelming rot, but also greenery that fights back. And lots of lessons to be learned around compassion for all living beings and maybe leading with gentleness, understanding that there is darkness in everyone.

The gods and their lore were great as well. We get to follow the threads of myths and legends, explore choice versus fate versus responsibility, and see how stories become sanitized over time in order to make them cleaner and more palatable. Lucha uncovers truths that are scarier and messier, things that go beyond unwavering faith. 

There were some stumbles here for me. The timing was a tad off, and sometimes we flitted through months in a way that made me feel a little ungrounded. And I think the romantic relationship suffered for this, because Lucha and Paz go from untrusting strangers to declaring feelings for each other without really getting to know each other. We just skipped over most of that development. Generally, it was just a smidge too fast-paced. Maybe it could have been broken up into a trilogy.

Overall, I thought this was a great story and I would definitely pick up the second half of the duology. It’s a fight against inequality, a lesson in embracing your best inner qualities and finding strength in who you truly are, and a hug for everyone with complicated families.

CW: drug use, addiction, abandonment, violence, confinement, death, murder, animal death, child abuse, body horror, classism, trafficking, kidnapping, sexual harassment, grief, forced institutionalization, police brutality, vomit, pedophilia

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(I received a free copy of this book; this is my honest review.)

Bones to the Wind is a riveting coming-of-age adventure with desert monsters, magic, and young people who are tired of being underestimated.

It’s time for the annual Forging, a trial that every child must pass to be considered an adult. Teenagers are split up into groups of five, each piloting a windship, and must hunt down a creature and bring it back to the Grankull before time is up.

Rasia is a badass warrior dreaming of glory, and she wants to come home in record time. She’s determined as hell, cocky, and has the skills to back it up. But she’s never worked well with others.

Unfortunately, she’s paired up with Nico, her childhood nemesis. Nico has impressive water powers, she’s next in line to lead their community, and she’s always been a bit of a self-righteous know-it-all. And Nico’s biggest Forging goal isn’t to be the best of the best like Rasia, but instead to make sure her little brother Kai survives. It’s his last chance, and he faces banishment otherwise.

Their society is always teetering on the brink of starvation, so nobody will miss the kids who don’t return. It’s up to Rasia, Nico, Kai, and their groups to make sure they’re coming home with heads held high. But time is working against them, and there are creatures and humans worse than the tentacled gondas they’ve chosen to hunt in the desert lands.

You’re plopped down into the sand and expected to gently sail away into this world. Nobody is holding your hand and explaining things, but I thought the immersive worldbuilding came in steady bursts and never felt too overwhelming or hard to comprehend.

And the world is SO interesting. I was devouring all the information we got, from the complicated politics of a society created inside the skeleton of a dragon to the tents and outcasts and scavengers to the ferocious creatures that hunt in the desert. There’s so much intricate culture here and a lot of thought went into piecing together this community.

The characters will make you furious and proud from one chapter to the next. Rasia is arrogant and at times a bit cruel, but she also believes in everyone’s potential and is incredibly hardworking and determined. Nico struggles to see the big picture, but cares so deeply for her little brother and also wants to be a better leader for her people. And Kai flip flops between secrecy and excruciating self doubt and then dares to dream. There’s a fascinating web here, and all of their various interactions will keep you guessing. Some characters are awesome and some are unredeemable, but they fill up the pages of this book pretty realistically. 

All the main characters are teenagers (though they will soon be considered adults in their society), and a lot of the middle portion of this journey is sex. They live in a community that encourages sex  (at least for those inside the Grankull) and there are severe consequences to having sex before they’re ready, so this is their first sort of “no adults, no rules” scenario. It’s not SUPER graphic sexual content, but there is a LOT of it and lots of sexual/sex joke-y commentary as well. It just wasn’t something I wanted to read about in depth, so the book really lagged for me in the middle. There’s also some acephobic/arophobic viewpoints held by the characters and their larger society (as an additional content warning heads up). I wanted to get back to the adventure and the other plotlines that had much higher stakes. 

Aside from that lull in the middle (which again, may just come down to personal preference), I thought the pacing here was really strong and the writing was great overall. A little bit of clunky text, but nothing that tripped up the reading experience.

This is the start to a duology and it does leave off on a major cliffhanger. I’m so desperate to know everyone’s fates, and I think that the second half of this story will likely be more politics-heavy which should be engaging. Most of this arc was spent away from their society and in the desert, and the insight we got into the politics was “yikes” at best, so I’m curious to see how they’ll come back and challenge and change their community. 

There’s also the start of a found family forming, and I hope we’ll see some more positive friendships explored on page during part two.

I’d definitely recommend this one to anyone looking for a thrilling fantasy adventure with a heavy dose of romance, great action scenes, and a fascinating society & world! 

CW: death (parent/child), abortion, pregnancy, ableism, slavery, child abuse, homophobia, acephobia, rape, suicidal thoughts/attempt, eating disorder, explicit sexual content (underage)

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(I received a free copy of this book; this is my honest review.)

Hammajang Luck was a fun sci fi heist, but its real strength was in beautiful family dynamics, an inclusive & queernormative world, and its love for Hawaii. 

Edie has spent the last 8 years in prison on an icy, isolated planet, and missed so much of their life - their nieces and nephews getting older, their mother dying, their sister attempting to leave a challenging relationship - so when they unexpectedly get early parole, they vow to never go back to heists.

Except Angel, the very person who betrayed Edie 8 years ago, is the person who gets them out. And she has a plan for one final job. The job that they failed on their last attempt. The job that will bring down the tech trillionaire who essentially rules their planet.

Can Edie really put their trust in Angel again? If they want to save their family, they might just have to.

The relationships between Edie, their sister Andie, and their niece (Paige)  and nephew (Casey) were a HUGE highlight of the book for me. Paige is such an iconic teenage character (and super wise). You could feel the love radiating between them, and the heartache of Edie missing out on so much. Both kids took to Edie in a very sweet way, and they challenged and prodded each other a bit, but also grew together. 

Edie and Andie stick together and care about each other so deeply. It was such a charming sibling dynamic. They’d lost both of their parents and were struggling to stay afloat, and they constantly had each other’s backs. They were also both dedicated to keeping their culture (as Hawaiians) alive and their parents' memories alive. How do you honor and maintain your culture even when you’re no longer on Earth?

As for the heist itself, it was more-or-less formulaic. Big bad tech guy, a team built of archetypes, a few “uh oh” moments but nothing too fear-inducing, and so on. The tension was never very high for me; I always thought they were going to be okay. There were no real twists and turns and I don’t think the heist elements offered anything new to the genre. 

The compelling aspect of the heist for me was Edie as a character and how much they had to lose - versus the danger or excitement of the heist itself. I did think the preparation elements and the introductory cons were very fun (though charmingly unbelievable).

Turning to the pacing, some parts towards the beginning really dragged. I wish we had leaped into the team already compiled, because there were a couple team members that didn’t get as much time in the spotlight. I wanted to SEE them come together as a family, and it felt like we were just told that it happened. I was really into the characters as we got to know them, but they still seemed like mostly strangers to each other. I do think adjusting the pacing at the beginning would have helped with this.

The queer rep is so rad. Butch and femme are used by the characters, and there are three super different butch major characters. The setting is a queernormative world with no gender or sexuality trauma, just casual representation. There are some discussions about how the world places you in boxes (ie. due to gender presentation, you might end up working at a dock or at a club), but no blatant queerphobia. 

As for the romance, Edie and Andie both are in toxic relationships (Andie is divorcing her husband and hoping to maintain custody of their kids, but he is still present, especially since she is pregnant). For Edie’s situation, I wished it had a slower redemption arc and we saw them move towards friendship. I loved Edie and Andie and just wanted healthier romantic relationships for them both! On the positive side, though, I adore Duke and Nakano’s relationship.

I think this book addressed classism really powerfully. You see the nitty gritty of this city and working life and who gets left behind - how neighborhoods are being destroyed and people are left in helpless situations.

The sense of space was a little weak, though. It was just tricky to get a full sense of the world. We were told that the characters are on a space station, but that tended to be glossed over outside of a few stated reminders and some funky gravity moments. It generally just felt like a high tech (but Earthside) city. What does it actually mean to be in space? What does the universe look like? What does it mean to mourn Earth? The ties to Hawaiian culture were powerful, but the rest fell to the side.

Though I clearly had some mixed feelings on this one, I really do believe it’s a worthwhile read. Not for bringing something revolutionary to the heist genre, but for the queerest heist team you’ll ever meet, a family that sticks together, and a love letter to Hawaii.

CW: death (parent), grief, classism, cancer, pregnancy, toxic relationship, sexual harassment, confinement, violence, sexual content

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(I received an advance reader copy of this book; this is my honest review.)