There was a lot in this book, and I just couldn’t figure out how it all connected, and it started feeling sort of chaotic and cluttered. The main plot, I think, was about Ronan and Attalah trying to stop the gentrification of their city. But there were also personal things going on with a bunch of different characters (eviction, family death, drug addiction), Ronan’s dad dying, the relationship between Ronan and Dom, ghost whales, a ghost human, and an imaginary person made real.

Also, there were sort of two POVs: Ronan’s and everyone else’s (I suppose omniscient). The second one showed the reader what was going on with a lot of different characters, sometimes only for a brief scene, sometimes the character was just an unnamed random person. And I found myself mostly wanting to get back to Ronan, because…

Ronan was a great, complex character. I loved how flawed and real he felt. He was a recovering drug addict. He was in love with and sleeping with his best friend, even though his best friend was married (open relationship), and he sort of convinced himself that he and Dom and Attalah could all be best friends and be happy together. He had a lot of darkness and hatred inside him because of how he was treated in Hudson growing up as a gay guy, and because his mother committed suicide and then his dad wasn’t there for him. He had complicated, complex, sometimes contradicting feelings about things that he was trying to understand and accept. And he was interesting and still likeable, despite his flaws. I was rooting for him.

I suppose all the characters were complex and flawed (some likeable, some not). I just didn’t get to know them all as well as I got to know Ronan since they didn’t have as much POV time.

Not important, but I think there was a little callback to The Art of Starving? Just a passing mention of something that happened, so it’s kinda neat that both books, though unrelated, are set in the same world.

The audiobook narration by Graham Halstead and David Sadzin was good. Graham Halstead especially did a perfect job of bringing Ronan to life.

So even though I couldn’t get into this as much as I wanted to, it’s rare for me to find this kind of frank, genuinely flawed character, and I definitely enjoyed that, as well as how unique and different the book was overall.

*Rating: 3 Stars // Read Date: 2022 // Format: Audiobook*