A review by chapkip
Please Report Your Bug Here by Josh Riedel

Did not finish book. Stopped at 69%.
This book was slightly difficult for me to rate as 1.) I wound up DNFing it and 2.) I don’t have particularly strong feelings about it. Even if a book is really not for me and I strongly dislike it, this can still evoke a certain passion. However, Please Report Your Bug Here just had me feeling sort of “meh”. I had very little drive to keep reading in order to find out what happened or what became of the characters. 

There were a lot of small aspects of this story that I did enjoy— including the mystery behind the black box images, the technology used to create the Portals app, and Noma’s character. However, I think I went into this book expecting a sci-fi plot with more action based on the description. This novel is definitely much more of an understated slow-burn. Unfortunately because of how far into the story certain conflicts were introduced I wasn’t very vested in the resolutions. 

I also kept going back and forth about whether attributes of the protagonist, Ethan, were written with intention or not. He seemed just out of touch enough to be awkward, but I think in order to make a statement it should have been handled with more conviction. 

Although this one didn’t wow me, it may be a book that I find myself thinking back on somewhat often. I also think I would possibly recommend it to someone else if I thought they were the right audience. 

Thank you to NetGalley and Henry Holt & Co. for an eARC of this book in exchange for feedback.