This book needed a little bit more balance between the romance and the rest of the world building and plot. This book relies on the fact that these two main characters are fated mates, a fact that the main male character Lothan recognizes immediately and the main female character Ada resists and denies for the majority of the book. While this setup is quite common, as is the amount of sexual attraction between the main characters, I think the book spent more time on the world building and setting up the story and the series over really progressing further in any sort of romantic development between these characters.

I thought it was very interesting to learn about Lothan's brothers and how the whole structure of the world and government was set up, how the religion played a part in balancing the government and to learn about how the father had made rules for his sons and how the world would be after he passed. However this took the place of any of the romantic development and all of the extra page count that I was hopeful would be a chance to flesh out more connection between the love interests was instead spent on the brothers bickering about joining the religious order. I think there was some component of the main female character starting to believe in the goddess of this culture, something to do with her wearing the crown? That felt like a weird inclusion. I also didn't fully understand the dynamics between the various brothers, they were fighting each other for power but also hated each other but also helped each other? I think that these will be the main characters in future books of the series.

Overall I just wanted a little bit more strength of emotion and development of the romance, but I do think this world was interesting and would give this author another try. Upon reading reviews I was surprised at how many people thought that Ada was an absolutely terrible heroine, I saw people calling her too stupid to live and stubborn and a bitch?? I saw multiple people say that Lothan deserved better and Ada was too dismissive of their bond? I do remember being a little frustrated at some of the choices that Ada made, but she doesn't believe in fated mates and had her own mission to find her sister, and there was a good chunk of the book where she literally couldn't even communicate? While I do think she made some rash and poor decisions, that didn't bother me to the extent some of these reviewers expressed.

Overall I thought this was a perfectly fine time. At the beginning there were a lot of characters to try to keep straight and I struggled because it didn't seem like they had very distinct personalities, but a little bit of the way in I felt a bit more organized, even though I wasn't really liking it. Overall I struggled to feel invested in this book, both in wanting to solve the mystery and in caring about these characters. I enjoyed the nods to And Then There Were None, but admit that I had a better time with the Christie over this one. I took turns having theories and suspicions of various characters, ranging from people who we thought were dead but weren't really dead but then they were faking being dead, and sideways glances at characters I thought were inserting themselves into the situation just to play detective.

Ultimately I liked the reveal about who the murderer was, all of the scheming and long explanation of how the murders were pulled off was satisfying. I didn't fully understand / appreciate the motivations behind all the murders, that element felt weak to me but I definitely gasped out loud when the murderer's identity was revealed. I saw one review that I thought explained this book well: because this book was written to ~emulate video games / feel like a game, if you are the type of reader that is in it for the deduction and trying to solve it you would really appreciate the book; but if you are the kind of reader who is there for the story and the characters and the plot, this one was a bit more of a miss. And I agree with that, because I felt like the writing was quite sparse and I think I would have appreciated more characterization to increase my level of emotional involvement. Especially the writing of the female characters was not great. I think there were a few pacing issues too, as even though it was important to switch back and forth between the island and the mainland, this did bog down some of the momentum.

I personally found this manga completely unmemorable. Typical manga / anime style of some dramatic long staring or sweeping away out of the scene. Art was nice.

This is probably the beginning of a cute story, I just ultimately didn't give a shit and have no interest in continuing. I was annoyed that there was never any issues with regards to lip reading. Other reviews exclaim how cute this is and love that it's a slice of life.

This book had a bit of a rocky start for me, it was hard for me to wrap my head around this concept because the virtual children are not real, and throughout the story so many people are treating them as real. There were sometimes no real world consequences for actions taken virtually, but then there were other times when there were harsh real world consequences?? And I didn't feel that this was actually realistic in any way of parenting if the participants can just log out? And are these virtual children being shown at every moment on the reality TV show? Are the babies ever "in stasis"? I just had a lot of questions about the literal logistics of how this show and experience was supposed to work.

As many other people say, I agree that at the beginning there are quite a lot of characters and it feels a little overwhelming, but I thought the author did a decent job reminding me which couple we were shifting to based on their secret, reminding you that there was a secret and still allowing for the mysteries to unfold over the course of the book. I also enjoyed the audiobook experience, there were multiple narrators as well as small musical flourishes and fun ad reads as well as the inclusion of accents and a variety of tones when reading the social media inclusions. I also really appreciated how much content there was that was sourced from fake social media about the show, it really emphasized how much of this book was exploring the theme of presentation, and what was real and what was not real. The writing style is written in such a way that there are constant cliffhangers and while this does make for a propulsive read, to some extent it also is just ratcheting the tension up and up and up without resolution until the dramatic End.

There were a few reveals that surprised me, I enjoyed having lots of theories throughout but was pleasantly surprised multiple times as well. I will say I felt like the ending was a twist but not one that I really understood? I didn't follow how being on the show was relevant to the revealing of the big bad evil stuff that was going on, nor did I follow how the show was supposed to reveal and force consequences either...?

Seems to be plenty of people who really really liked this one, and that's great, though I do agree with one review that I saw that said that this is kind of a scary book because it is almost believable and set in our own near future world. I also agree with a review that I saw that this was low on atmosphere and setting and that the story could have used better character development-- I agree with this because it didn't really set me up to be "rooting for" or liking anybody.