Manhunt

This book started and ended strong, but the middle was hard to get through for me.
I probably would have enjoyed it more if there had been less POV characters and perhaps if we had spent less time with Fran which I found rather insufferable and deeply unlikeable.
Sex seemed to replace any kind of relationship building, I can understand where the author is coming from with that, a lot of us do have a hard time differentiating between sex and intimacy, but the end result, for me, was that the relationships all felt unearned, shallow and adolescent. That aspect could have been interesting if it hadn't been the same for every single character.
There is a lot of hate and even more self-hate in this book, a lot of the characters do not like themselves not one bit, so it's a bleak reading experience no matter who you are (fat, trans and pretty, trans and not pretty, soft, tattooed...), I think that was part of the point Gretchen was trying to make (there can be no utopia because we hate ourselves as much if not more than others hate us) but yeah check trigger warnings before you read this cause it pulls no punches.
I wanted to love this book and I'm really bummed that I just didn't.