2.5 stars 

Thank you to the publisher for sending me an ARC to review before print. 

 

After being dumped by the couple she lived, worked and was in a relationship with in New York City, Elsa finds herself in her small-town childhood bedroom—depressed, listless and wondering where to go from here. After a rising movie star and his cohort of friends arrive in city for a theatre festival, Elsa makes an unexpected connection. 

 

I was so excited by this novel, which promised explorations of queer identity, commentary on the internet and overconsumption, and reflections of post-modern adulthood. Unfortunately, I feel like all of these things fell flat. When I reached the end of the novel, I said, “That’s it?” and felt like we had gotten no further into… any… explorations than we had at the start. 

 

Elsa felt like an extremely flat character to me. We barely get any descriptions of her—physical or otherwise—to craft a mental image. While some might appreciate this opportunity for a self-insert, I was bored. From cover to cover, all I really felt like I gathered about her was that she was young-ish, depressed and had no idea what she was doing with her life. I didn’t root for her, or dislike her—I really felt nothing at all. Not a great feeling when I’m trying to invest myself in her coming-of-age story. 

 

Queer identify certainly exists in this book, but there was very little depth to it. At one or two points, Elsa contemplates her identity as a reflection of her former and potential relationships. There’s a nonbinary character (redundantly referred to as “the person named Sam”), but how their identity intersects with Elsa’s is not really explored. 

 

The writing in this book really turned me off. At the start, some sentences were so roundabout and overwritten, I genuinely had no idea what they were trying to say. It didn’t even feel pretentious—just confusing as to why the author chose to find the weirdest, lengthiest ways to say very simple things. The further in I got, this either didn’t happen as often, or I simply got used to skimming lengthy nonsense. Either way, it felt less painful in the second half, which I appreciated. 

 

This was exacerbated by the vague descriptions of extremely obvious modern technologies and apps, like Netflix and Instagram. At one point, the author provides an exact description of Instagram’s “blocked” screen graphics without naming the app—wholly unnecessary and grating, in my opinion. Weirder still, “Tinder” was the only named app. Maybe this changed between ARC and publication, but I found the whole ordeal very strange. 

 

Altogether, I found myself just not caring about anything in MISRECOGNITION—the characters, their relationships, their obsessions with their phones, nothing. It didn’t feel like the characters grew at all or did anything of interest, and I was left wondering what was the point of it all.