It's personally my favourite series, and I remember being a bit weirded out my the narration style at first. Might I recommend leaning into it all the way by listening to the audiobook? They're really well done, the narrator was what brought me to the series in the first place. Smart vibe as a guided meditation, but much darker lol.

Yeah, our library has a Bookmobile for neighbourhoods that are too far from library branches! Definitely look into it!

When I read it for a Victorian fiction class in uni, we talked a lot about the motif of scientific advancement and Darwin, and how Victorian society was struggling to come to terms with some of those ideas. But never in a million years would I have picked that up on my own.

This was my thought exactly! I can't imagine being a new reader when it first came out and trying to visualise virtual spaces and cyberpunk landscapes without any visual lexicon to guide you. It would be so free, but also potentially so confusing!

I found that last part to be a super mature take for a couple of teens! Aza tries to help Daisy understand, but she doesn't expect Daisy to fix her, she has professional help for that.

My biggest takeaway from the book was that it's hard to live with mental illness, but it's also hard to live with loved ones who struggle with mental illness. There are many difficulties in this world and it's not helpful to compare them. Each one is valid, and all we can do is try our best to lessen the burden on ourselves and others.

My second biggest takeaway was that a sick life is still a life worth living, and comes with relationships worth having. OCD was a strain on Aza and Daisy, but they still got so much out of the relationship. When you're struggling with mental health, that fact isn't self-evident, so I found it to be a pretty powerful realization for me.