Thrum

Thrum is very plot forward, which made it fast-paced and entertaining but didn't leave much space for Ami to become a fully developed, memorable character. Her role on the ship and her backstory on Earth are both vague, just the bare-bones information needed to propel us through the story. I feel an extra 50 pages split between the beginning and end would have allowed for more of a character arc.

This book had me theorizing from the first page and delivers on some of its big mysteries, but I felt it ended with a few too many unanswered questions for me. Genuinely, I think another 50 pages to build the characters and answer some questions would take this book to a five star for me.

I have a bad habit of guessing plot-twists/big reveals the second the set-up is introduced, which makes it difficult for me to write reviews. The reveals were still satisfying for me, but I guessed a lot of the twists and think loyal sci-fi fans might see things coming a mile away.

This doesn't affect my rating, but I'd like to talk about the marketing/genre situation. I feel the book was intentionally marketed as a certain genre to get readers interested and maybe even distract them from what was, for me, a very obvious set up. I understand why the book was promoted the way it was, and I don't even necessarily disagree with it — but I was surprised to see readers tag it as things like “spicy” or “age-gap-romance.” While those labels are true in a way, I feel like it fails to acknowledge the insidious nature of this relationship and, in a way, romanticizes it. But I also see that the romance, for better or for worse, is a driving element of the plot, and that it's promotion as a romance was effective in getting readers interested. I'm interested to see more people weigh in, and I'd love to hear what y'all think.

It seems like I have a lot of negatives to say, but I really did enjoy this book. It was tense, gorey, fast-paced and wholly entertaining. If the premise has you interested, I'd say it's definitely worth the read. I'd recommend this book to fans of weird sci-fi films, Alex-Garland types.