Booklist Review

Sophie is a recent university graduate living at home in Dublin with her parents and in the shadow of her twin sister. She spends her days applying for jobs, for most of which she is rejected, and doomscrolling on the internet. Her social life is turbulent at best. Then there is Rory, a boy who seems to share Sophie's passion for politics and her compulsive internet use as a defense mechanism against the real world. But Sophie only knows how to talk to him behind the shield of a computer screen. When an inexplicable streak of light appears in the sky, it's just what she needs to spiral deeper into a hole of existential dread. Irish writer Prasifka's debut is a decisively contemporary novel, steeped in references to internet culture, social media, and Gen Z nihilism. Prasifka attempts to encapsulate the voice of a generation, and the result is a story told through a perspective so vivid that reading it mimics the experience of Sophie's doomscrolling: readers will be fully engrossed in Sophie's mess, unable to look away.