Good

This book was unusual. It focused a lot on interviews and “radio” clips. I’m glad there were multiple narrators, I think it was necessary when there were so many characters involved. It was also interesting in that the story is pretty much laid out for you early on, and there isn’t much change in the overall story for a large chunk of the book barring a few points, but the details kept it from feeling slow or boring. It’s also a short book, I think it works best being slightly shorter than average but it could have been a bit longer than it is. It would have been nice to learn more about the characters involved in order to connect with them more. I also would have enjoyed learning more about the, er, “group” at the centre of the story.

The topic of gender identity is a complicated one and I don’t think there’s ever a way to handle it that will appeal to everyone, even everyone on the same side. It’s bound to be divisive. But I felt it was handled well. There’s a lot of ignorance from characters in the book, sometimes malicious and sometimes not. It would have been nice to have had another major character who was more well informed to balance the others out. Maybe even an LGBTQ+ character. But there IS a lot of ignorance and bigotry in the real world, so although some of the comments from otherwise “good” characters were slightly grating, the overall tone wasn’t unrealistic.

This book gets very heavy in parts, especially right near the end. The end was done well and I felt like it cut off at a good place, but I did find myself teary and wanting a hug afterwards! I read a lot of heavy books but that ending was still an uncomfortable (but good!) listen.

It won’t be for everyone for several reasons but I’d recommend it. It’s a solid 4.5* from me, rounded up to 5 :-) narration was fine, no strong opinions either way but it was all okay and I’d have no problem listening to these narrators again.

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