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What I was promised: Post Apocalyptic Dystopia with queer themes
What I got: hit over the head with buzzwords with none of the subtlety required to get me to actually think about the ideas presented

The opening is really bad from a technical standpoint. It follows Ava and her realization that her girlfriend isn't going to be able to follow her into the climate change resistant Inside. That's the main conflict of her storyline (one of three), but the novel opens with everything but the main conflict. Instead, before you have a reason to care about this character or even the story as a whole you have to slog through boring prose of how Ava is a teacher, how she acts differently around her students, an entire flashback dedicated to her and Orchid's meetcute, a really brief and uninspired sex scene, the description of their apartment together and how Orchid is a construction worker, AND THEN FINALLY the inciting incident for the character. To make matters worse, the inciting incident just happens and the explanation for what it is and why you, the reader, should care comes after. And then it's immediately dropped to swap to more exposition.

I always feel bad receiving an ARC for a book and then thinking it belongs in the trash, but this novel reads like a second draft. I stuck with it to the 20% mark but by then there were two more point of view characters with chapters that didn't make me care about them either and still no real explanation on what Inside was like. I got bored.

Back to the buzzwords. I could only get myself through the first 20%, but there are way too many ideas presented. The pacing is awful, and the sheer number of complex issues this book attempts to address leaves none of them with enough time to feel meaningful. There's the climate issues, with the Inside and the product line Renewables, to queer relationships, to being trans/nonbinary/poc in spaces where that isn't the norm and how that relates to cooperate offices and spaces, to how much power people with a lot of money have and the consequences of that for everyone else. It's definitely a lot, especially in the opening three chapters (which I repeat are three chapters of exposition because each one follows a different character) and definitely led me feeling overwhelmed.

I'll also critique the Men's Rights protesters the book wants you to believe are bad. It didn't give a reason why? I was pretty confused, all the characters regarded them as scum of the earth but they didn't do anything? Were they protesting a legitimate inequality, like how in the US only men are required to register for the draft, or were they the strawman feminism bad? Honestly, I didn't care enough to find out.

As for the dystopian setting, from what I read it never went deeper than a shiny coat of paint. It's hot. Really hot. And the NYC subways stopped. That's about it. I was pretty disappointed that worldbuilding potential was glossed over as actually taking a moment to show how those things changed over 30 years and how they gradually impacted the lives of many would've been interesting. But no, we have to get back to the bumper sticker slogans.

This is the kind of story I would've gladly beta read for someone and help them edit for. But as a finished product the author expects readers to shell out money for? Absolutely not. I'm glad I didn't. Thanks NetGalley for the ARC :)