This is one of those everyone-should-read-it books. Profound, important, and left me feeling significantly changed.

That said, it's hard to put anything about it into specifics. It's hard and raw and easy and gentle all at the same time, and while there's some cool character stuff and speculative stuff and whatnot, everything is in service of the theme - which is so huge that a one- or two-sentence summary feels like doing it a disservice. But though it's a theme book, it's still a very easy read with in-the-moment stakes.

There are about two specifics I think I can point out about this book:

1. One of the best handlings I've ever seen of the child-hides-big-important-supernatural-thing-from-parents trope. Jam doesn't try to involve her parents (tries not to, in fact), but they do become involved and aware from the beginning; the reason she ends up hiding from them instead of pulling in their support is not an abstract fear or absence of trust, but because they refuse to accept that something needs to be done. (Theme, again.)

2. While there's direct handling of traumatic subject matter, it's abstracted and off-screen to the point where I'd be surprised if it was much of a trigger for anyone. I'm honestly pretty impressed at how much it's... made readable without being made palatable, or in any way diminished, even while the plot revolves directly around it.

3. ...Okay, one more thing: there's about one thing that bothers and confuses me about this book, and it's the inconsistent handling of Jam's relationship with honesty towards her parents. From the moment her mother Bitter is introduced it seems as though honesty is always the best choice with her, and yet Jam instinctively tries to hide from her from the very start of plot, even before anything supernatural happens; later, when she's forced by her parents' actions to hide from them, she feels it as a huge emotional weight; later still, even though only a day or two have passed in-universe ("what felt like forever"), she's so used to hiding that we get the sentence "She knew how to keep things from them." Especially in a theme book that deals heavily with what's seen and unseen and hidden, this feels... weird? Really weird? So weird that I feel like I must be missing something?

Regardless of that, though, it's a book well worth reading.

Selling points: sensible portrayal and questioning/flaw-finding of a genuine utopia; biblical-style angels, but, like, without the religion though; trans girl protagonist; entirely Black cast; no romance (!) even though the protagonist, who is a girl, has a best friend who is a boy (!!); strong non-romantic relationships; queer (poly, bi/pan, trans) representation; disability (wheelchair user + Jam's unnamed neurodivergency (leaning more towards autism than selective mutism myself, but she's certainly in the general category of sometimes-speaking)) representation; somehow both science fiction and fantasy without being science fantasy.

Warnings: child abuse (but, again, so heavily abstracted I'm not even sure if it merits a warning); more profanity and dark subject matter than one might first expect from the simple writing style.