Honestly? I don't care much about the science. I am not that informed about anemones or tidal pools or microscopic cells or whatever biological shit thrown into the book. But I care, A LOT, about the main character's inner struggles and regrets and what-if questions (mostly regarding her marriage and her husband, who was the closest person she ever had in her adult life). Especially when I too, consider myself an introvert, albeit not up to her level.

Some lines written here truly broke me, e.g. this one:

He had created his share of our problems—by pushing me too hard, by wanting too much, by trying to see something in me that didn’t exist. But I could have met him partway and retained my sovereignty. And now it was too late.

Or this one:

Seeing all of this, experiencing all of it, even when it’s bad, I wish you were here. I wish we had volunteered together. I would have understood you better here, on the trek north. We wouldn’t have needed to say anything if you didn’t want to. It wouldn’t have bothered me. Not at all. And we wouldn’t have turned back. We would have kept going until we couldn’t go farther.

To say that I ugly-cried is an understatement.

Maybe Annihilation won awards for being a sci-fi book, a surreal one at that. But for me, it doesn't matter. Even the fact that this novel doesn't exactly have a plot does not bother me. It was in the protagonist, the biologist, that I lost myself.