[3][4] Using the narrative structure of a police investigation into a violent crime, the opera explores the world of online relationships and chatrooms, and was billed by the ENO as "a cautionary tale of the dark side of the internet.
"[9] George Hall, writing in The Stage, praised the libretto, but called Muhly's music "a commonplace and ultimately thin soundtrack accompaniment".
[10] Rupert Christiansen, writing in The Daily Telegraph, described it as "a bit of a bore – dreary and earnest rather than moving and gripping, and smartly derivative rather than distinctively individual".
The review also faulted the libretto which "moves with such exasperating slowness, that if the audience hasn't worked things out by Act II, then they're probably asleep or sensibly diverting their mental energy elsewhere.
"[14] In The Guardian, which has frequently commissioned guest columns from Muhly, Andrew Clements dismissed the opera as "a bland mid-Atlantic compromise" with a musical idiom "pitched somewhere between recent Philip Glass and the John Adams of The Death of Klinghoffer.