TW: biphobia, terrorism/bombing, gun violence, fire
4

When April May stumbles upon a sculpture, making a video of it with her friend doesn't seem like a life changing choice. But it turns out that her video, carelessly presenting the statue and naming it Carl, only stars one of many Carls, and was the first to document them after their sudden appearance. Rocketed into surprising fame winds up being surprisingly addicting, and April jumps to become the face of it all. But does she really know what that means?

I do this thing where I pick up books knowing maybe 5% of what it's about (usually because it's been long enough that I've just forgotten) and then refuse to look it up. So I had zero idea what I was getting into with this book, and that wound up being kind of the perfect way to read it!

I love bizarro fiction, and this definitely feels like it leans towards bizarro. Hank Green pulls out a lot of cool ideas, but also really throws the weight around making this inherently kind of silly and ridiculous concept immediately something that matters.

There's a good amount of tension in this story, as you wait to figure out where the mystery is going, or where all the ominous signs are leading, and Green plays it all well. But there's also a lot of humor, and that humor is mixed as well as the ridiculousness is with the high stakes.
This never became a super gripping story that I didn't want to put down, but it also never got boring or stopped being intriguing. I always had questions, and the plot never stopped moving.

Specifically, I love the idea of The Dream. I kind of wish the book were longer so we could spend more time with that concept alone. That's probably my favorite part of the book, but there are plenty of surprising updates to the mystery at hand that come completely out of the blue and are just plain fun to read about.

April May is a bit of a love hate for me. As a flawed protagonist, I love her. I actually like the way she's written a lot, and her glaring issues- I think she's a realistic, unexpected character. Yet, I cringed way too often reading her. I loved her, but man do I hate her choices. Some of that just goes hand in hand, but it also sometimes feels like a bit much.

Some parts of this story felt shaky to me. The vibe never quite got to the confident point I thought it would, and the constant referencing to the idea that we, the reader, know all of this already, got really tiring and annoying for me personally. I didn't hate that as a framing device, but it got used way too often.

I'm really curious about the second book! I don't think this is a showstopper of a novel, but it was definitely very fun and I can see some cool things coming out of the second one.