"[7] Michael Valinsky, writing for Bomb Magazine, wrote, "Oloomi effectively creates a fictional universe that thrives in its heavy-handedness: readers might get fed up with Zebra’s over-expressive hyper-intellectualism since much of her narration is filled with elegiac diction and hyperbolic discourse.

"[8] In a mixed review, The Boston Globe's Laura Collins-Hughes noted that Van der Vliet Oloomi "knows exactly what she’s doing in creating a narrator-protagonist who lives almost entirely in her head [...] The trouble, for the reader, is that this very two-dimensionality makes Zebra seem less a character than a thought experiment infused with literary homages.

That impression persists through most of the book’s first 180 pages [...] Oloomi, in her rigor, asks us to inhabit Zebra’s airless, intellectualized existence without the compensations of, say, extraordinary prose or arresting atmospherics.

Unlike Collins-Hughes, however, Dumitrescu concluded that "in denying readers some common pleasures of reading — absorption, escapism, empathy — Van der Vliet Oloomi conveys the cold loneliness of Zebra’s grief all the better.

[10] Library Journal's Wendy Galgan reviewed the audiobook edition, saying, "Leila Buck's narration, which brings Zebra's story to life in all its complexity, is a perfect fit.