I love Sarah's comics, they are always poignant, funny, and relatable! As a millenial woman, I feel very seen hahaha

Such a beautiful, atmospheric read! I wasn't expecting this lyrical writing from this author, given that my first experience with her books was through Fable and it was just passable - I don't know if it's because it's an YA novel and Adrienne Young writes adult characters best, but here, I was hooked from the start with the mystery of the Farrow women and the murder of this beloved town character. June is a great MC - she is brave, emphatic and most of all relatable and it made me want to follow her story. I was expecting some of the twists, but the main ones, especially regarding the family was just JAW-DROPPING! So, so good and well though-out! I do have a few complaints, though - the main conflict resolved itself too easily and too fast, and though I loved the couple, I think it lacked scenes between them to make the reader fully invested. Yes, the chemistry was there, the angst as well, but there was no big moment and the development bewteen them as mostly off page. I think this book would benefit from 50-70 more pages to reach its full potential and become a 5 star-read for me, but I enjoyed it a lot and will check out other novels by Adrienne!

Not my favorite Murderbot story. I don't know what it was that threw me off a bit because I thought the plot was interesting and we have a beloved character's return, Murderbot exploring his human feelings more and more and actively growing through this whole novel. I also like where the series is going after this, and I loved the new characters (well, not all, Thiago was just meh). I don't know, maybe the pacing here was a bit off? Since the previous installments were all novellas, a full-fledged novel may have messed up the rhythm - the beginning up to maybe 45% was action-packed and intense, and then we got a lull and the ending was back to action (but not as energetic as the first half), which made the impression it wasn't as fast a read as initially. Still, it is full of Murderbot's dry humor, and insights on humanity and capitalism, and is a delightful read despite everything.