Among Others worked super well for me, especially considering that there is little-to-no plot and the whole book is a well-dressed bibliography. But the protagonist's (diary author) voice is super strong and realistic, and … okay, let's be honest here: I felt very pandered to in the best way. This book is in some way a modern equivalent to Gaudy Night, intellectual+atmospheric pandering to an in-group, and I'm in the in-group, and that's all there is to it.

A very cerebral, nearly clinical book, and I wanted to like it more than I actually liked it. I'm very here for the character of Socrates, and … not much else, to be quite honest. It's a fun concept, but I felt that even where it tried to go past the clinical, detached nature, it remained off. High quality, but not for me.