Mixed bag

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The cover of this is absolutely gorgeous, and the description is incredibly engrossing. However, the novel itself was a mixed bag for me, though I think this is very much more of a 'me' thing than an issue with the novel itself. I find myself in the contingent of reviewers who didn't care for the evolved version of English spoken by the majority of characters in the world of the novel, though I appreciate the thought the author (apparently a linguist) clearly put into the creation of this future dialect. It just isn't my style of sci-fi--I tend not to like jargon-heavy world-building, and this was analogous enough to put me off and impede any fully immersive reading experience. I did enjoy the main character, though I wished that her internal voice (influenced by her mother) about her weight didn't enter into the novel as much (or, indeed, at all). A fat--or at least fuller-figured--teen girl MC is SO NEEDED, but this element undercut that representation a bit, at least to me. As for the plot and the handful of major twists--I appreciated them to an extent, though some of them played into common sci-fi archetypes so weren't that surprising.