it's amazing for its genre. It's not that amazing if you dont like this type of book. also, not a hater of smut - not at all - but found myself getting annoyed at the sheer amount of sex scenes

Short ver: It's a super fun read

Long ver: As a whole, I enjoyed reading the book. The style is easy to read and I like the idea of this unconventional relationship. Sadly, there's a lot of little things that annoyed me. In no particular order:

• the characters would break out into monologues regarding their moral stances - felt very performative, was often unnecessary and took me out of the flow/immersion
• the book is dripping with tumblr- and millenialism. That's not a crime or objective flaw, I just... really... didnt like it here. Why are we singing Hamilton to a child?
• it's so oddly heteronormative. Like if the book's dripping in tumblrism, it's soaking in heteronormativity. That's nothing new regarding cishet romances but I mention it here because it really annoyed me, considering how the author advertises herself as a lover of unconventional relationships and how the characters break out into moral rambles and how the MCs best friend in a queer black man
• don't take this too literally, but the best way to describe the main character is as a tumblr Mary Sue. As much as I hate popular use of that word, it gets pretty close here.
• unnecessary miscommunication

The smut is okay. The characters are pretty lovable up until a certain point, afterwards only Cyrus stays lovable. It's an okay book.

I think it's beautiful that the author got a chance to expand upon her once published essay in the form of this short book. It has a lot of nice quotes! Sadly, as others have said, it becomes very repetitive at a certain point. Don't let that stop you from reading it though, it's a short read and gives you nice pointers on where to read up on this topic next if you're interested.

1. If you're gonna add trigger warnings, try to tag not just the kinks but also the literal abuse in the book
2. I know Im an idiot for being invested in the plot of erotica, but why even try to make a big cool plot and then leave 20 plotholes or straight up ignore it at the end?
3. Shoutout to the virtue signaling of mentioning trans and genderqueer people once in the entire book for a corny diversity comment near the end and apart from that having not a single character that isnt a cis man/woman (for clarification, I hated it because its corny, not morally bad or anything. just include actually diverse characters instead of doing this)
4. Grammar mistakes. :-[ To be expected in smaller books but when I already dislike the book they pop out even more I guess
5. Not the worst, but bumps this book down to one star for me: I didnt enjoy the smut at all

I am incredibly split on this book.

The short review: I share Sim's overall opinions, I detest how they conveyed them. If you read this book, keep in mind that the author is an anarchist that fully supports armed resistance (something that isnt disclosed until more than halfway into the book) and is very anti-west, anti-capitalist.

The positives: I have to commend Sim Kern for even writing this book – most works I know of on the topic of Palestine are incredibly academic. This book wants to introduce people to pro-Palestinian activism with humor and personal anecdotes and stories, a great tool to make people interested in what you're teaching. It doesnt just try to introduce you to the topic, it cites and talks about many other books, authors, journalists etc, so further research is very accessible. I can tell a lot of love went into this book.

The negatives: This book is, in my opinion, very irresponsible. The author doesnt disclose their political camp (anarchism) until the very end. This wouldve been important to keep in mind throughout the book as Sim Kern commonly uses concepts, theories and phrases associated with anarchist and marxist theories and writings. The use of these in of themselves isnt an issue; it is an issue if this rhetoric comes before explanations and definitions. As much as I agree that Israel (the state) is evil, this book suffers severely from not giving its reader the chance to form their own opinion at all. As a fellow educator, I wouldve kinda expected better from Sim Kern.

The book also commonly lacks context. Reading that non-muslims were "dhimmis", a PROTECTED CLASS, in muslim empires, was crazy. Im no expert on early caliphates but a simple internet search shows that non-muslims commonly lived in effectively ghettos. As for newer muslim empires, which I am actually knowledgable on; dhimmis were still second class citizens whose entire lifelihood was dependent on the goodwill of or usefulness for the current ruler. Sim presents the existence of dhimmis as positive. And this happens... fairly often. Which is a shame.

Aside those two things, the two lowest points in the book for me were:

• writing what is effectively fanfiction over Yahya Sinwar, a man who was probably the mastermind behind the oct 7 attacks and had ties to Iran
• being unable to actually call the terror attacks on oct 7 bad and saying that the killing of civilians was something singular hamas fighters did that wasnt planned at all

I cant lie, I really didnt care for the smut. I was oddly invested in the characters and their dynamic. If this was less smut and more character development/talking/bonding/whatever I would really like this??

Also, the book kinda flip-flopped between what it wanted to be IMO.