[1] Before the novel, Asghar had not written fiction, and described writing the book as "one of the hardest artistic endeavors I've ever done".
[5] Retta compared the book's content to Asghar's web series Brown Girls, writing that like it, "the novel is committed to an honest portrayal of the lives of queer women of color".
[5] Writing for Booklist, Allison Cho also praised Asghar's prose, saying that the novel contains "that same lyricism from her poetry collection".
[6] In a review for the New York Times, Nicole Flattery praised Asghar's writing as "distinctive", but wrote that it "serves to mask commonplace observations" and was occasionally unclear.
[3] Asghar was nominated for the 2023 Young Lions Fiction Award for the novel, which was ultimately won by Zain Khalid's Brother Alive.