A review by abbie_
A/S/L by Jeanne Thornton

emotional reflective sad slow-paced

3.0

Thank you to the publisher and Netgalley for my free digital ARC! I read Jeanne Thornton’s Summer Fun back in 2023 and I absolutely loved it, so I was really excited to be approved for her latest offering on Netgalley. Unfortunately I found A/S/L to be lacking the spark I so loved in Summer Fun. I’m not sure if it’s because I’m just not a video game person, but I struggled a lot to maintain my interest during pretty much the first half of the book. The second half did pick up, but I’d go so far as to say the first half is a slog.

I did love the inclusion of emails and instant messaging threads - I was not in the internet in 1998, but in her afterword Thornton says she used real message archives to get the tone down and it shows. Some of the group text threads were EXCRUCIATING to read, perfectly encapsulating the feminine experience in male-dominated internet spaces. PhilippeDarke, a curse upon your family. 

Sash, Lilith and Abraxa do sort of make up for the monotony of the video game aspects, especially Lilith and Sash. But sometimes the POVs (often using the second person) got blurred and confusing. It has so much potential but it feels just too stilted and bogged down in technicalities to garner more than 3 stars and I’m sad about it 😭