Key Lime Sky, by Al Hess, had a lot of things I love — desserts, friendship team up, blogging, and extremely weird but consistent aliens. Denver is an aspiring pie reviewer who also takes whatever writing jobs will let them earn a little money and avoid people. I’m more of the ghostwriting content freelance generation, not as much Denver’s product-review generation, but yeah. Precarious freelance life is real and a solid hook.

This novel turns from food blogging fun into a friendship team-up adventure about surviving a mysterious alien invasion. All things I love!

But overall, the relationships felt underwhelming because all the new friends and lovers seemed like the same person with different names and pronouns. Denver is so convinced that they’re an outcast and weirdo, mostly because they’re too blunt to socialize easily, but since basically every other character also directly states their thoughts (and their feelings/kinks/enemies/backstory), it was hard to see why Denver felt like that. And that made our protag harder to root for, because poor-me is not an appealing character trait. I also didn’t buy all the beats of the romance, mostly because if Denver’s so direct that they keep accidentally making enemies, then the inevitable third-act misunderstandings felt especially forced.

I enjoyed the very weird but internally consistent aliens, and their bizarre abilities and actions. First, only a few people saw something strange, or remember seeing something strange, and then unexplained weirdness starts happening. Without revealing quite how this works and what’s happening in Muddy Gap, because you should discover this along with Denver, it’s an enjoyably strange alien encounter.