A review by renatasnacks
The Atlas Six by Olivie Blake

2.0

OK so my journey with this book was:
1) Read a review of it in PW that said basically "this is an interesting premise executed poorly"
2) thought to myself "it IS an interesting premise tho so I'll check it out"
3) read it
4) thought "hmm this is an interesting premise executed poorly"
5) went online and found out this was a ~self-published TikTok sensation~ that later got a publishing deal????? and like


I dunno man! It is a cool idea but these 6 characters are all extremely "tell not show". and there are some characters of color but their allegedly diverse life experiences don't like super show up on the page.

I did read it to completion because I was interested in the plot and there was a kind of cool twist but like............eh IMO

also everyone is tagging this LGBTQ and like, is it?

Spoiler

the character Parisa can read minds and she's very hot and her ~thing~ is she likes to have sex with powerful people because their minds are more vulnerable to her powers when they're busy having sex, so like yes she has sex with all genders but is she attracted to them or just horny for power?? unclear?? and then when another female character, Libby, has a F/F/M threesome involving Parisa was SHE into women or just sort of mind controlled by Parisa? and like yes Nico did seem to be obsessed with his former [male] roommate but not explicitly in a romantic way and sort of seemed more like a younger brother intensely protective thing? not that it can't also be gay but I'm just saying like, personally I would prefer to have more intentionally canon queer characters before I hype up a book's queer representation!