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Come on, you can't dish up all those details and then not explain what you mean. It's like you crafted this post to make me both want to learn more about the book and never learn anything else about it.
Sorry for the late reply.
Disclaimer: I read this like a year ago, so the details might be hazy, and I am not re-reading the book to give you a more accurate critique. Also, I will be spoiling the entirety of the book. Continue at your own risk.
Where to start? Well, at the obvious place; the author, Gabrielle Zelvin. Gabrielle Zelvin is half eastern European Jew, half Korean, who went to Harvard University. Now let's switch tracks. What are the deuteragonists of the novel? Sam Masur, a half-Jew, half-East Asian man, and Sadie Green, a bonafide women-in-stem. And here we arrive at the most obvious and glaring problem; it is painfully apparent that the protagonists of the novel are essentially self-inserts. Sam Masur represents the half-Jew half-Asian experience, and Sadie Green represents the women in higher education experience. You can imagine how a progressive half-Jew half-Asian would portray themselves, the narrative and their environment. Hint; annoyingly.
While I list out my grievances with this book, keep in mind that the writing is tumblr tier; overly saccharine, uses too many metaphors, and is generally unfulfilling/meaningless.
The book is a narrative exploring the relationship between Sam Masur, and Sadie Green, through the narrative device of their joint game development company. Gabrielle Zelvin either doesn't play games, or is ass at describing games. As a gamer, there were many many instances of me tilting my head at some of the descriptions. They aren't strictly wrong as far as I remember, just not completely 100% accurate. Think the Doakes meme of him staring in his car; you know something's up but you can't put your finger on it.
Sam Masur is used as a punching bag for Gabrielle to take out all her frustrations about nice guys on. I'm not joking. The entire beginning of the book sets up this weird dynamic where there is some sort of romantic tension between Sam Masur and Sadie Green. Sam and Sadie are literal childhood friends who go through a falling out; the natural conclusion is that there is going to be some tension. However, Sam Masur is portrayed as a pathetic, emotionally immature, ugly, indecisive, loser. He's literally crippled. Gabrielle goes at length to insinuate if not state that just because you are nice to a woman, you aren't entitled to be in a relationship with them. And I'm not kidding you, Sadie Green ends up with an almost caricature of a chad; a tall, emotionally mature, strong, smart, funny, Korean man. Oh and he's called Marx btw.
Speaking of romantic misadventures, Sadie Green's professor, mentor, Dov, is also, clearly a stand-in for Gabrielle's own experiences with older men. Sadie falls for him, even though he has a wife, and undergoes an extremally toxic relationship that culminates in the grand finale for why this book is hot fucking ass, but more on that later. In short; this book is a barely concealed cathartic writing experience for Gabrielle to complain about guys she doesn't like; nice guys and toxic old guys women fall for.
The middle part of the book is a mess, but in short it details the growing tension between Sadie and Sam, because Sadie feels that the media is giving most of credit with respect to contributions to Sam. There's that feminist lens again. This whole thing culminates in Sam metamorphosing into another caricature; this time of a tech-bro. He literally get's a buzzcut after a suicide attempt, dresses in turtlenecks, and transforms into a confident speaker in front of the press, in a seemingly miraculous reversal from his usual timid nature. And throughout this whole sub-narrative, you can feel the resentment dripping. Sadie is pissed off at Sam for being the face of the company, for getting most of the praise, for being charismatic, as opposed to her more reserved behavior in-front of the press. Again, you can literally see that the narrative is a soapbox for a progressive passive woman to complain about what they perceive as slights they receive from the world.
The ending is the most political, partisan drivel you will ever see. The book's emotional climax is a shooting conducted at their studio, wherein Marx dies, conducted by a radicalized white teenage man, over the inclusion of gay marriage in their MMO. It's so blatantly biased. When I was reading it I literally thought to myself, "Are we forgetting about Charlie Hebdo"? It's progressive fanfiction, where their enemies actually do the things they accuse them of doing.
But see, all of these pale in comparison to the scene that utterly dooms this book. Remember that toxic relationship with the mentor I mentioned? Well, apparently, that relationship had a bondage element, where the mentor would tie Sadie up and shave her pubic hair. Also, that relationship lead to an abortion. But that's not the worst part. In the midst of this description, there's a throwaway line about how the mentor experimented with pissing on her. What the fuck. It is so against the run of play of the narrative of the book. Like, seriously, why the fuck are we talking about piss kinks in a fucking book ostensibly about game dev? That's the reason why I went crazy. This scene is emblematic of the overarching problem of this book. Which is that the book is Half-Jewish, Half-Asian woman smut/bellyaching wrapped up in the most meagre of narratives. The subtext drips with resentment that only a half-jewish, half-asian women could have. Its romance scenes include the scenes that would get women hot; the older mentor, and the bondage, and the piss and the pubic hair and the Korean chad. It validates all the annoyances/"challenges " that that demographic has; about asian nice guys, and people downplaying their accomplishments, and about toxic old guys they
fall in loveget manipulated into being with, and imaginary white extremists.Another reason why I had a strong reaction to it was because at that time, a lot of sci-fantasy books were being written by asian women and recommended to me. And reading their synopses, you could tell that they had the same problems as this book.
Genuinely, we need to shut things down until we know what the fuck is going.
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