If you like a workplace love affair and find pop culture references enjoyable, ignore my bad rating and read on the find out if you might like this book more. It just absolutely wasn’t for me. My biggest issue was the weird focus on sex. There wasn’t anything explicit at all and I normally don’t mind, but if the protagonists strip down to their underwear on their first day of working together and spend the night fantasizing about each other, that seems more like wish fulfillment than character development or chemistry. Sexual attraction is actually everything to two main characters have going for each other: their relationship might have worked for me if they were just co-workers, but it never felt like they developed a deep connection that might justify calling it love. If this took more time to develop these two, I might have started caring about what happened to them. The author tries to do some empowering things concerning race and gender, and I highly appreciate that, it just feels flimsy and clunky. People that are sensitive about racism or sexual harassment might actually be annoyed about how some minor things are handled. The different alternative futures that are visited had good ideas. They were not revolutionary, but you can do cool stuff with known concepts. There was the attempt to depict what everyday life would be like, or is for the protagonists, in these worlds, but this being a novella none of the ideas were fleshed out in any meaningful way. With the third alternative universe, this was suddenly a different book, and genre defying things can be cool, but I didn’t feel like this little mini story had anything to the with the bigger narrative expect loosely connecting to a theme I don’t want to spoil. Talking of spoilers, there was one - kind of cliché - plot element that I really didn’t like. The only redeeming feature for me was that the writing style is compelling, so even not liking anything going on, at least it wasn’t a chore to read. Other readers might enjoy that this is a little like older SF, trying to be a little more progressive, and that the other worlds are really different from each other. If you really like the scientist and assistant trope, maybe you care more for the characters dynamic than I did. There is probably an audience for this book, but it also doesn't do anything really new or particularly well that makes me feel the need to rate it better. * I have received an arc from netgalley for a free and honest review*