Honestly, I’m going to keep this one as a mini-review. I’m a bit angry with it. After spending way too much time trying to find a decent audiobook to listen to that wasn’t just another KJ Charles series, I began this one and immediately fell in love with the lush prose. I thought oh hey, maybe something literary is a nice change of pace for me! It’s been awhile since I read something super literary. Yeah the problem with super literary is that, despite what people think, it’s just as formulaic as genre fiction. Of course there was an ambiguous, unclear ending that didn’t actually wrap up the story. Of course, in the end, it was another “tragic queer novel where queerness makes all the queers sad in the end except in their fantasy dreaming.” I’m so tired of that.

It’s one thing if I knew the book wasn’t for me from the beginning and kept going for my own stubborn reasons. I can’t get mad when I do it to myself. But this one felt like it was going somewhere, and then suddenly, it was over. No resolution for one character, a false resolution for the other. With what felt like a very pointed statement about how tragic it was to be gay. Just no.

Performance: The audiobook was read by Nadia Albina and Aasiya Shah, who both read quite well.