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Okay soooo... I finished this book a while ago and I was really looking forward to it. The author, Xiran Jay Zhao, is really cool and has a very cool and informational YouTube page (i'll link it here) over Chinese depictions and portrayals in media which is how I found her in the first place. I figured since I liked her content, that I would check out her book, so I went and bought it and started reading it the very same day.
I finished the book in a day and a half, and honestly I wish I stopped after the first day. It was a very promising start, kind of, sometimes, and it never really got any better than that(althought it might have had a moment, at most two, somewhere in the middle). The concept of the book is really cool, but I think the book relied too heavily on the concept of it and not in its execution. One of the main attractions of the book was the main poly relationship, and honestly, those bitches did not like each other you cannot convince me of it. The book started with one of the "pairs"(main character/man 1) already liking each other romantically, which is fine, and the second pair getting stuck together(main character/man 2). But man 1 and man 2 barely talk to each other at all, and then they're just all dating like 3/4ths into the book?? I was blindsided by that, but there were so many other glaring issues that I just didn't worry about it. Another thing I really had issue with is that this book is really anti-men, which like, go off queen I love that for you, but it is literally SO MUCH like. Like there is no prose or description that doesn't bring it up. Like if we are so anti-men, why do we keep talking about them? Like i'm not even sure if this book passes the bechdel test? It might on technicallity but it doesn't feel like it. I also would like to clarify that I am not anti-men, I think men can be pretty cool, but none of them in this book are, they kind of all such(even the love interests).
If I could go back, I wouldn't finish this book, or start it, or buy it, which sounds really harsh, but I didn't even talk about the plot or characters or dialogue or worldbuilding or writing style. I could go on about what I didn't like about this book, but the fact that I have even thought about it since... let's just leave it at this for now.