Chaos on CatNet

A nice fluffy delight. It deals with things like friendship, reciprocity and sexuality. I also like the way it handles trauma. You don't recover in one day from spending your life in fear. The plot was sometimes slightly convoluted, but overall a good read. I would recommend it for someone who wants something cute they don't have to spend absurd amounts of time overanalyzing.

As thrilling and fun as it is a public service, honestly. Strong themes around safety awareness and young people's wellbeing: how young people engage with social media/apps, what information is shared; how conversion therapy is wrong AND illegal; championing various identities and normalizing polyamory among other sexualities; besides a mystery, in-contrast-to-CatNet, not so nice AI, the Big Bad is a fundamentalist religious doomsday prepper cult; and the emphasis on public safety over armed police (which is given further context in the Author's Note). There is that standard trouble with YA, ‘you've got to get the adults out of the way so the teens can have adventures' is made more plausible here by the adults coming in various flavours of ‘trying but a little unprepared' to ‘completely fucking useless' to ‘willfully abusive, though possibly brain washed by a cult' and it's still exasperating, even as a happily childless adult, for me to recognize these kids often not only don't seek help from adults, but might be justified in doing so. Somewhat dispiriting to realize that much discussed in the book probably matches real kids' upbringing in various circumstances. Thank goodness for Mimi! Trying to remember the last time weather was a persistent obstacle in a book with face paced action, I've seen extreme weather action movies, but it being really cold out, like hypothermia in ten minutes cold, with snow, windchill, is actually incredibly effective without slowing the pace of the action.  The reveal was one I guessed early, but didn't take away from my enjoyment. Ending did feel a little rushed - a couple loose ends I would have liked to see tied off. Would still highly recommend this duology. And wouldn't mind a future installment in the series! Always down for happy, helpful AI characters.