The Many Half-Lived Lives of Sam Sylvester

(4.5) A sweet story of themes that are important to me. A good book to cry to whilst remaining hopeful.

I feel terrible giving this book such a low rating but I didn't like it at all. 

I will say first off that I really liked Sam's relationship with their dad, and the way that emotions are described  being interpreted through facial expressions and the general autistic point of view. 

Every character that wasn't Sam or their dad was pretty one-note, though. I kept forgetting about Sky even though he was part of the core friend group, and it took me like half the book to realize Aidan and Dylan were two different guys. There were two different characters whose entire personality was “mean girl”. The slang is really embarrassing (stop saying emoji!) and the constant brand name and meme references are already dated.

The mystery was also just really bad. The perpetrator is pretty easy to guess because it's the one adult with zero redeeming qualities. The author also seems to want to write a book where true crime sleuths save the day while acknowledging how damaging and ghoulish true crime superfans can be and that did not work for me. The way everything worked out comes across as “digging at old wounds and invading peoples' privacy is bad unless I do it.”

I love The Many Half-Lived Lives of Sam Sylvester. I think it is the combination of Sam and Junius that makes this story for me. The mystery is solid. The friendships are even more so. Did I forget to mention that there is a romance amidst all of this, pairing an ace and a bisexual who are so sweet together. MacGregor gives us everything and I love it.

I received an ARC of this book and I am writing a review without prejudice and voluntarily.

Check out the rest of my review at Phoebe's Randoms. Link in bio.