The Last Beekeeper

+2 stars for: MY BABY GINO I LOVE HIM UGH, favorite character by FAR. always made me giggle and smile when he had a speaking line and his loyalty and support??? unmatched! the reveal of his backstory made him just that much more enjoyable. love love loved him!

+ 2 stars for: being able to viscerally feel, taste and HEAR this book. i've was so enraptured by the language used to describe sasha's feelings and environments and the way she experiences honey. WHEW it was just so great.

+1 star for: being a love letter to our pollinators. everytime farming was described in this book i wanted to pack myself up and flee to the countryside to be a beekeeper.

-1 star for: “don't blame the bees, blame the machine” being SO on the nose! everything that happens in this book is explained and foreshadowed ad nauseam. it ended up becoming repetitive and so so so predictable. at around the halfway mark when the action started to ramp up this book was sitting at a 4 star but then it slowly teetered into 3 star territory because of how stale it got. the mystery and flowery (ha) language couldn't lift the weight of the overall plot so i was a bit disappointed by the end.

-1 star for: making a character with my name be annoying and gullible LMFAO. sasha was such a blank protagonist that on multiple occasions i wish we could have gotten to live in someone else's head.