Strange and Stubborn Endurance

I liked it!

First and foremost, though, it's a romance. Technically a romantasy but mostly a romance. The world building is... meh. Like it's there, they're clearly not on Earth, but it felt circumstantial rather than deliberate. So much set dressing for the romance. It's fine.

The plot is decent. It's a mystery. But again. This is a romance. The plot was there to provide conflict. Overall I'd say the plot is nothing to write home about. It was decently entertaining. It definitely got more interesting towards the end, which was appreciated.

The passage of time was sometimes difficult to keep track of. A lot happens in a very short period of time.

This sounds like damning with faint praise but what's important is that the romance was very very good--good romantic development, paced well. Despite some anguish on characters' parts, I never felt like I wanted to shake someone for being overly oblivious. And if you want a queer romance book, I highly recommend it.

This really didn't do it for me! I think part of that is that I'm not wild about romances and this was a romance. A big complaint for me is that the romantic leads behave so constantly and consistently we've-been-to-therapy correctly towards each other that I found their interactions tedious and didactic. It felt moralizing to me ("observe, this is the correct way to handle an emotion"), but I think it was intended to be more of a wish fulfillment love story ("imagine if you dated someone this emotionally mature"). Also everyone is described as being super hot and I did not enjoy that.

The heroes behaved perfectly in every situation and the villains were over-the-top horrible in every situation, and even though the moral stakes were ones I agree with (don't sexually assault people, don't be homophobic, don't murder people), I was put off by the black-and-white-ness of the characters.

While the author has put a lot of thought into gender and sexuality, even if I found it ultimately shallow, I found the near total absence of a critique of power and class to be pretty uncomfortable.

That said, it wasn't hard to read, and if you wanted a comforting romance about healing from assault (which, fair warning, is very graphic, though not imo gratuitous), it might be for you. And I really liked that the protagonists spend the whole book trying to solve a mystery and do an absolutely abysmal job at it.