The character work in this really didn’t work for me. I felt like the author was bashing me over the head with certain characterisations and it just led to all the characters reading like… caricatures tbh. Like, I get it. George fetishisizes Asian women. Geoffrey is a self-proclaimed liberal who refuses to check his superiority complex which stems from his own existence as a white man. Alexis is the otherworldly, pretty, levelheaded black friend only there to act as an antithesis for Geoffrey. There’s not only no nuance with these characters—there’s also no subtlety. While reading this it felt like the author didn’t trust my ability to get it and that resulted in some excessive telling rather than showing, as well as scenes repeating the same lessons for the reader over and over again. For example, how many scenes must we endure of George and the family eating Asian fusion takeout only for George to end up perving on the waitress? Surely we’ve grasped that he’s a freak and his “appreciation for the culture” is a kind of orientalism (lumping all the cultures together). This heavy-handed character work got tedious and boring really quick for me, unfortunately. It’s a shame because I was expecting to like this a lot more. 

I did, however, really enjoy and appreciate the linking of blue eyes to privilege (and, by extension, white supremacy).  I definitely thought that was interesting and it’s that through-line that held me when the characters fell short, but I’m such a character-oriented reader that I simply can’t look past how little fun I had exploring the ins and outs of the characters presented to me. In fact, I didn’t have to explore them at all. They were spelled out for me with such bold lettering that it was almost abrasive.