It really is better and more nuanced than I expected it to be! I especially appreciated that half the time when Mars makes snappy comebacks or mentally judgy eyerolls at people, it's very clearly Mars's POV, and while sometimes it's very justified, a good bit of the time it's clear that other people do actually have reasons for e.g. not wearing gladiator sandals on a hiking trip no matter how edgily gender-bending that fashion choice might be. It felt very accurate for a smart, self-assured teenaged protagonist who is, in fact, still a teenager, rather than an Authorial Voice Of Which Characters We Should Care About. And the author did a great job of capturing the summer camp experience (except making it just ABSURDLY fancy, lol), with weird but universally accepted traditions and so on.

I admit I was still kind of annoyed by the end ~diversity win~ (it felt very what these girls REALLY needed was someone who isn't a girl to take charge of them! to me with how sme of the details played out, even though I was glad to see a gender-fluid main character, and did like Mars a lot), and the hilarity of the gonzo ending didn't fully counterbalance the way it makes zero sense. But I expected to dislike the book, and found it a flawed but fun read instead, so kudos to the author! And one cannot deny that it's a gleefully wild ride.