A bold and inventive novel about real romance in the virtual workplace—​bringing Castillo’s trademark wit and sharp cultural criticism to an irresistible story about the possible future of love.

Girlie Delmundo is the greatest content moderator in the world, and despite the setbacks of financial crises, climate catastrophe, and a global pandemic, she’s going places: she’s getting a promotion. Now thanks to her parent company Paragon’s purchase of Fairground—the world’s preeminent virtual reality content provider—she’s on the way to becoming an elite VR moderator, playing in the big leagues and, if her enthusiastic bosses are to be believed, moderating the next stage of human interaction.

Despite the isolation that virtual reality requires from colleagues, friends, and family, the unbelievable perks of her new job mean she can solve a lot of her family’s problems with money and mobility. She doesn’t have to think about the childhood home they lost back in the Bay Area, or history at all—she can just pay any debts that come due. But when she meets William Cheung, Playground’s wry, reticent co-founder (now Chief Product Officer) and slowly unearths some of his secrets, and finds herself somehow falling in love, she’ll learn that history might be impossible to moderate and the future utterly impossible to control.

This book was . . . interesting. That’s the word I keep landing on. Interesting. I appreciated the wit, I appreciated the world Castillo built, and I appreciated the characters, but I walked away from it kind of cold, and I’ve been trying to sort out why.

Girlie Delmundo is very, very good at her job. She’s a content moderator, and she’s the best there is. We’re a few decades into a future that’s been beaten down by economic collapse, climate breakdown, and a pandemic, and Girlie has clawed her way to the top of her field anyway. She’s about to get a big promotion. Her company has bought up the biggest name in virtual reality, and she’s being moved up to moderate the VR space, which her bosses keep calling the future of how human beings will connect. The job pays incredibly well, but it cuts her off from basically everyone, including her own family. The money means she can fix the problems that have been weighing on her family for years and stop thinking about everything they’ve lost. Then she meets one of the company’s founders, gets pulled into his orbit and his secrets, and starts to fall for him, which complicates the clean, controllable future she thought she was buying.

Castillo is clearly a sharp writer. The wit is real and the world she builds feels realistic and the social commentary underneath it has teeth. The book has a lot to say about race, about labor, about who gets used up to make these shiny platforms run, about what we choose to remember and what we’d rather pay to forget. Those are meaty ideas, and the book takes them seriously.

The characters are also well fleshed out. Girlie in particular is a great lead. She doesn’t take any garbage from anyone, and I loved that about her. I understood her. I understood the racism and the systemic stuff the characters were navigating. On a craft level, there’s a lot here to admire.

But I’ll be honest, I didn’t care much for the story and that’s probably more about me than the book. I’ve found that books set in the video game and virtual reality space don’t grab me. It’s a funny thing to admit, because I actually love playing video games. You’d think a book set in that world would be right up my alley, but it never works for me on the page. I had the exact same problem with Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow. I liked those characters, I understood them, and I still couldn’t get invested in the plot or the setting. Same thing happened here.

That’s a tough thing to review around, because I don’t think this is a flaw in the book. I think it’s a mismatch between the book and me. The ideas are genuinely good and the execution is strong. The setting is just a hard sell for my particular brain. I can recognize this is a smart, well-made book while also admitting I was bored for big chunks of it. Both things are true at once. I just didn’t connect with it the way I wanted to.

If you click with virtual reality settings, or if you loved Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow, bump this one up your list. Castillo is doing interesting work, and you’ll probably get more out of the setting than I did. If you’re like me and the VR thing or the gaming industry leaves you feeling bored no matter how good the writing is, this might not be your bag.

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