2.5 stars, rounding up to three in the spirit of generosity because I appreciated that it was an exploration of identity through the lens of gender, sexuality, nationality, and race.

To make this book work, you have to either: a) have a notebook where you track the characters and their relationships to each other, or b) read each chapter as a stand-alone and spend ZERO energy trying to connect the dots between characters. Otherwise, you'll end up driving yourself mad trying to remember who's who and how they're connected. It felt like a collection of short stories that someone attempted to bind together retroactively, rather than a book that was created with a fine thread of gold laced elegantly through it from beginning to end.

I'll also note that I listened to the audiobook, and while I might be tempted to blame that for some of the clunkiness in tracking characters, from other reviews I've read, it sounds like it allowed me to dodge an even more challenging bullet – the lack of punctuation or formatting.

In any case, the main reason I'm only giving this 2.5 stars is that it ended with a whimper, not a bang. I thought the point of introducing so many characters then attempting to seam them together in final chapter was to evoke the gasp of awe as all the pieces fell into place. Instead, this book left me scratching my head, wondering if I'd missed something, because the end didn't satisfy at all.