This was pretty chill, considering it was about an alien invasion. Chill and cozy with apocalypse is a great combination though and not surprising from this author.

I liked the weird alien invasion stuff! The deeper into the book it got, the more surreal it felt. The characters stayed grounded, but the world around them got more surreal. I like that vibe. Like, the world around us going wild, but at least we have each other.

Speaking of which, I have mixed feelings about the romance. Sometimes I found it cute and sexy. Other times I found it frustrating, and it happened very fast. I don’t normally mind lack of communication or miscommunication, but they kept bringing it up and then not really explaining and not at all listening to the other person, keeping the miscommunication going in a forced way. Relatedly, numerous things Ezra did were red flags for me. His reaction when he found out Denver was sexually inexperienced was infantilizing, in the sense that he seemed to think Denver’s inexperience made xem incapable of making the decision to sleep with someone in their situation, despite Denver being an adult and sober and able to make that decision just as well as Ezra. He explained his reason for his reaction, but it didn’t change how I felt about it. And when he thought *SPOILER* Denver slept with someone else, I could understand disappointment or hurt, but he’d known Denver for like a day, and they weren’t in a committed relationship, and he had just done the infantilizing thing and pushed Denver away, and he was rude and acted like he had a right to decide who Denver could sleep with. *END SPOILER* Luckily none of this was the crux of the story, it was just a small part. And it’s not unrealistic, just personally off-putting. And again, I did find some parts of their romance, like their second meeting, sweet. Surprisingly, what I didn’t mind was how quickly they had sex, or that they took the time to have sex while the world was ending, because I could completely understand the “fuck it” feeling in that situation.

There was a nice friendship element too! With a nice message about friendship and connection, since Denver always felt like everyone hated xem and xe didn’t fit in.

Denver was blunt and imperfect but cared about people, and there were times when I felt for xem. *SPOILER* Like when that video was accidentally posted. That would be awful. Xe handled that better than I would’ve, to be honest lol. *END SPOILER* I mentioned my issues with Ezra above, but he was ultimately kind and understanding toward Denver. I liked both Trevor and Taisha, even though they were side characters with smaller roles and sorta felt mostly like a lesson for the reader on how to be a good ally. The blog commenters were a fun addition, some sweet in their own way, some awful, some funny.

There was a lot of great rep. Denver was autistic and nonbinary. Ezra was fat and pan. Taisha was trans. If anyone is looking for a good OwnVoices review about the autistic rep, I recommend this one from Lola’s Reviews.

I mostly liked the audiobook narration by Curtis Michael Holland. Side characters were given pretty exaggerated, almost cartoon stereotype voices, which isn’t something I really like. But it did make everyone, including Denver’s blog commenters, easy to tell apart. And the narration for Denver and Ezra was fine.

Overall, this was a surreal but fairly chill story about alien invasion, romance, friendship, acceptance, and pie!

*Rating: 3.5 Stars // Read Date: 2025 // Format: Audiobook*