Member Reviews
Really wanted to like this! Made it to like 16%, but the text kept graying out and didn't like how the chat was coming across!
I enjoyed this book. It was creepy at times, over the top at times, funny at times, and also thought provoking. Romasco-Moore gives a very tongue in cheek perspective on today's internet culture. "Doom scrolling" has that name for a reason and this just brings that to a whole new level. I also liked how I wasn't entirely sure if this was an issue of mental health or reality. I liked the characters and the banter. I like the queer representation. Also, the online comments were hilariously entertaining.
My only criticism was that I wish that the book maybe took itself less seriously, because it wasn't entirely apparent if this was meant to be satire and silly or taken seriously. I didn't take any stars away for this though, because doesn't most horror do that?
Overall the book was great fun.
Before I can talk about why this book frustrated me, I'll have to explain what I want/expect from horror. For me, successful horror taps into something that exists off the page. It's not just, "Ooh, this monster is creepy!" or jump scares or something. Even if that's what a story focuses on at the surface level, there needs to be something more for me. Another layer.
The first 2/3 of this book did that pretty well, I thought. There's spooky stuff happening in the livestreams, but there's also this undercurrent of isolation and self-doubt. Teresa/Replay can never quite say what her motive is. Does she want to solve the mystery, or does she just want attention? Is the stuff happening online real, or is it prank/hoax/stunt? The fact that mental health plays into this was, I think, handled pretty well, and Teresa's love-hate relationship with the internet felt pretty accurate to me, and likely will resonate with many readers who are chronically online. Had this book stuck the landing, it would have likely been a 4-star read for me.
The end, however, lost me. I found myself rolling my eyes in places where it got too silly (not on purpose, since the scenes were definitely supposed to be scary), and it didn't strike me as consistent. I'm not sure what I was supposed to be afraid of, and I think part of that stems from the fact that the book was trying to do too much and lost track of its core thread. The way the baddie gets, hrm, resolved (that seems sufficiently spoiler-free...) was interesting but didn't make a lot of sense with some of the other things going on. During the finale, Teresa is in the villain's mind, but that mind is inside HER mind, and yet it's all... happening on the internet? Maybe? And in hindsight, I'm not sure why some of the other things happened now that I've gotten to the end.
I suspect that if you don't think too hard about it, this book would be quite engaging... that sounds so rude, but I spend a lot of time thinking about magical and scifi mechanics, so I tend to question the logic of things. Why would it serve the villain to X? How come they could do Y, but not Z? In the case of this book, I think the answer is often "because it was creepy and forwarded the plot," but the more time I spend thinking about this, the less sense it makes. And the end... huh? Not satisfying. If you're someone get gets picky about story structure, you might have similar complaints. If you're like, "Geeze, this reviewer sounds annoying and pretentious," you will probably have a better time than I did.
All that said, I do think Romasco-Moore captured that creepy, claustrophobic feeling of being too deeply invested in the internet to the point where it's eating at your mental health. At the same time, this book isn't going, "The internet is bad!" Teresa makes connections with people, too. The online mayhem and comment threads were some of my favorite parts of the book. Bonus points for mental health and genderspicy rep. Unfortunately, this one didn't work for me, but I can see other people rolling with the punches and enjoying it a lot more.
Thank you to NetGalley for the ARC of this book. Sorry I didn't like it, but maybe this will help other readers decide whether or not the book is a good fit for them.