First 2/3 fantastic, funny, dark, clever… then it got TOO clever, and then a massive thing was revealed and the book ended 🙂 It just ended. In this very left field way.

Mona tried to do something and it simply didn't work for me.

It wasn't just the hyper-sexual nature of every single person, or the long monologues that elite writers are apparently incapable of keeping behind their teeth, or even the weird mythological flood in the last . . . 10 pages? You know, all of this together is making me think I need to knock it down to 1 star. I may update.

I disliked the callous nature with which Oloixarac portrayed sexual violence. I disliked all of the drug and alcohol and sex talk; Mona was extremely unlikeable and base (masturbating on a plane? "Eating my sushi"? Please, give me a break). It was unsettling how much Mona sexualized violence against women as if it was something to be desired. I understand she was working through her trauma, but I was rolling my eyes the whole time.

If Oloixarac wanted to garner sympathy for South American POC women with this portrayal, she did a terrible job. The only person I felt sympathy for was Sunrita and she was only spoken of in passing. I would've played up "Mona" as a modern da Vinci muse: the lone, impassive figure who is complacent yet observant, always. A blank slate on which to project desire and intention. Tie it all back to what the writers are all doing in Sweden, somehow. I don't know man, I'm not the author! Pero dale, hermana, ponete las pilas.

The tie-in Oloixarac tried to create with the horrific violence Mona endured to that of Sunrita's gang rape and death left much to be desired. Frankly, the entire book was disjointed — likely exacerbated by Mona's liberal vape Valium use — and an unreliable narrator only works if the character is someone who we want to walk with during the story. I just wanted it to be over.

It's trauma, plain and simple, symbolized by final destruction. It could've worked and it didn't. Oh well, on to the next!

Overall: it insists upon itself.

I read a couple of chapters but I don't think I'm the right audience for this book. The writing didn't draw me in, and I wasn't intrigued by Mona as a character.