What do you think?
Rate this book
Local Heavens
Not yet published
Expected 14 Oct 25A corporate hacker. An elusive billionaire. A society trying to survive the American Nightmare.
New York City, 2075. Filipino American Nick Carraway has just moved to the heart of the fractured New Americas, where he’s struck by the city’s contradictions—shining corporate towers casting bleak shadows over the slums of a crumbling middle class.
When Nick meets alluring, new-money Jay Gatsby, he falls for Gatsby’s frank charm and confident aura. But in a city where the wealthy flaunt tech-enhanced bodies to cheat death, surfaces aren’t all they seem—and as a corporate-sanctioned cyberspace hacker, Nick knows that no secret can stay buried forever. He’s the reason they don’t. And his latest assignment? Investigate Gatsby himself.
As Nick becomes entangled in the dark affairs of the elite—and the devastating fallout of their actions on the city’s most vulnerable—he must reckon with the limits of compassion and accountability across class and status. What takes Love or truth? Heart or soul?
A brilliant reimagining of Fitzgerald’s classic tale of glamour, desire, and desperation, Local Heavens examines the guardrails of morality . . . and the price of desire.
New York City, 2075. Filipino American Nick Carraway has just moved to the heart of the fractured New Americas, where he’s struck by the city’s contradictions—shining corporate towers casting bleak shadows over the slums of a crumbling middle class.
When Nick meets alluring, new-money Jay Gatsby, he falls for Gatsby’s frank charm and confident aura. But in a city where the wealthy flaunt tech-enhanced bodies to cheat death, surfaces aren’t all they seem—and as a corporate-sanctioned cyberspace hacker, Nick knows that no secret can stay buried forever. He’s the reason they don’t. And his latest assignment? Investigate Gatsby himself.
As Nick becomes entangled in the dark affairs of the elite—and the devastating fallout of their actions on the city’s most vulnerable—he must reckon with the limits of compassion and accountability across class and status. What takes Love or truth? Heart or soul?
A brilliant reimagining of Fitzgerald’s classic tale of glamour, desire, and desperation, Local Heavens examines the guardrails of morality . . . and the price of desire.
455 pages, Kindle Edition
Expected publication October 14, 2025
45 people are currently reading
9915 people want to read
About the author
K.M. Fajardo
2 books312 followersK. M. Fajardo is a second-generation Filipino-Canadian writer based in Toronto. She graduated from the University of Waterloo with a degree in Global Business and Digital Arts before working in the tech industry. A speculative fiction writer, she enjoys stories that straddle genres and characters that find home in strange worlds. After a childhood spent roaming bookstores, she now lives and writes in the city with her rescue cat, Clementine, and can occasionally be found haunting the nearest café. LOCAL HEAVENS is her debut novel. Find her online at kmfajardo.com.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 30 of 104 reviews
March 31, 2025
Hi all, with the centennial of THE GREAT GATSBY coming up, I am incredibly grateful to get to publish my thematic response to Fitzgerald’s beloved novel this year. I hope you enjoy meeting Nick, Gatsby & co. (again, or for the first time). I’m just dropping in to answer some questions I've gotten about the project, and then I'll be disappearing fr lol. Content warnings are below.
Do you 'need' to read GATSBY before reading this book? — It's not necessary. Whether or not you read GATSBY first is more a question of which way you want to engage with LH: as a reimagining, or as its own story.
On Nick — He uses the name “Carraway” (for reasons discussed in the book) but he is full Filipino. He is, once again, the narrator, but I hope you’ll find that while TGG is about Gatsby, LH is about Nick.
Inspiration/influences — The book is as much a love letter to GATSBY as it is to cyberpunk. My most formative cyberpunk media growing up was Cowboy Bebop (1998), Feed by MT Anderson, and Neuromancer by William Gibson (and all of Gibson's work). I had a lot of fun getting to craft my own twists on classic cyberpunk world-building elements, while playing with the nostalgic romance of Fitzgerald's Jazz Age and his meditations on wealth & class.
LOCAL HEAVENS was roughly a four-year writing journey. I feel very lucky to get to debut with it. It's the queer sci-fi fever dream project I've always wanted to write, and it is dedicated to anyone who feels lonely, alienated, or trapped in the cruelties of capitalist empire and the American Nightmare. May the dock across your bay light up for you soon.
Thank you very much for reading.
🍸❤️🔥 -kris
Content warnings:
Do you 'need' to read GATSBY before reading this book? — It's not necessary. Whether or not you read GATSBY first is more a question of which way you want to engage with LH: as a reimagining, or as its own story.
On Nick — He uses the name “Carraway” (for reasons discussed in the book) but he is full Filipino. He is, once again, the narrator, but I hope you’ll find that while TGG is about Gatsby, LH is about Nick.
Inspiration/influences — The book is as much a love letter to GATSBY as it is to cyberpunk. My most formative cyberpunk media growing up was Cowboy Bebop (1998), Feed by MT Anderson, and Neuromancer by William Gibson (and all of Gibson's work). I had a lot of fun getting to craft my own twists on classic cyberpunk world-building elements, while playing with the nostalgic romance of Fitzgerald's Jazz Age and his meditations on wealth & class.
LOCAL HEAVENS was roughly a four-year writing journey. I feel very lucky to get to debut with it. It's the queer sci-fi fever dream project I've always wanted to write, and it is dedicated to anyone who feels lonely, alienated, or trapped in the cruelties of capitalist empire and the American Nightmare. May the dock across your bay light up for you soon.
Thank you very much for reading.
🍸❤️🔥 -kris
Content warnings:
Want to read
November 29, 2024i’m seated. the bookshop employees are scared and asking me to leave because it ‘isn't out yet’ but i’m simply too seated.
March 19, 2025
Thank you to Netgalley for providing me with an ARC!
I finished this book in less than twenty four hours, but waited a bit to write the review because I doubt I can do the novel true justice. I wanted to sit with it, let it wash over me, keep it in my mouth like candy. It was the first time in a while I didn't feel inundated with info-dumps, but trusted as a reader. I felt as if I had the space to unpack this, that it was more than just the text on page. It was at once the original work and something else entirely.
Local Heavens is a cyberpunk retelling of The Great Gatsby, which, if you weren't aware, is my favourite classic. The bar was high for me, and Local Heavens delivers on all fronts.
The writing style has Fitzgerald's meticulous decadence, which I'm happy to sink my teeth into any day of the week. While doing this, it still retains aspects of a style outside of the original's, which I think is crucial in any retelling. Some old lines or metaphors were adjusted to suit the new setting, which I thought was a necessary addition. It definitely ran the risk of poor execution, but not in this case; it managed to hold its own very well. Jordan's interlude, while still remaining as strongly written as the rest, felt as though it had its own, clear voice outside of Nick's--and that is very difficult to accomplish. I could go on about the prose for weeks, but I'll stop. Just trust that the writing alone was enough to secure Fajardo as an author I will be reading voraciously in the future. Understanding another author's style to this extent, while maintaining clear hints of one's own, is a Herculean feat. I deeply admire it.
The worldbuilding may be confusing for some, but I rather appreciated the work I had to put in on my end to understand it--that's good, that's what I want and like, especially as a frequent sci-fi/fantasy reader. It was evident there was thought put into not only how the world's "current" systems work, but how they got there in the first place. I would've loved more elaboration, but I understand how this can be limited by page counts and run a risk of, indeed, info-dumping. What matters was that it was interesting, and did a good job of setting up basic "laws" of the technology as well.
Above everything else, the characters were what really blew me away. They are, at once, the same as the original work and entirely different people. Nick remains my favourite, as he's always been (I have always thought him very intriguing, and not at all who he says he is), but the changes made him not only more entertaining, but more down-to-earth. The choice of having Nick be a person of colour and how it played a role in the way he interacted with the elite was fantastic. It created another, crucial layer on top Fitzgerald's initial critique--which, alongside the added aspects of the role of technology and the effects of late-stage capitalism, really rounded out the point of the original novel and modernised it. From the moment I heard it was a cyberpunk Great Gatsby, I knew it would work. The themes, criticism, characters, and plot of the original novel graft almost perfectly into such a setting.
It'd be a poor review if I didn't mention the relationship between Nick and Gatsby. Without saying much, as it is worth the experience, I was not only deeply invested in their development, but appreciated the quiet way it built up. There was no explicitly stated tension, and not only is that perfect for their relationship, but it is how I prefer relationships to be written in general. This was done very well, especially considering how many plot points and other relationships had to be juggled. (Also a bisexual Nick has always made sense to me, I thought the same when I read the original work. I also appreciate that the scene in Chapter 2 of the original work was properly understood. Glad we all agree that's what Fitzgerald was implying.)
Local Heavens is timely, but more than that, it is aware the reader does not need to be badgered with quotables and dialogue stating the obvious. The disastrous effects of capitalism are clear even before Nick sets foot in the cyberpunk version of the Valley of Ashes. Attraction between characters brims under the surface, unsaid, for hundreds of pages before it releases. Every scene is exquisitely written. Quite frankly, this is the exact kind of book I not only want to read, but write myself. I can't stress enough how much I recommend it, if not for your own love of The Great Gatsby, but then for your enjoyment.
I finished this book in less than twenty four hours, but waited a bit to write the review because I doubt I can do the novel true justice. I wanted to sit with it, let it wash over me, keep it in my mouth like candy. It was the first time in a while I didn't feel inundated with info-dumps, but trusted as a reader. I felt as if I had the space to unpack this, that it was more than just the text on page. It was at once the original work and something else entirely.
Local Heavens is a cyberpunk retelling of The Great Gatsby, which, if you weren't aware, is my favourite classic. The bar was high for me, and Local Heavens delivers on all fronts.
The writing style has Fitzgerald's meticulous decadence, which I'm happy to sink my teeth into any day of the week. While doing this, it still retains aspects of a style outside of the original's, which I think is crucial in any retelling. Some old lines or metaphors were adjusted to suit the new setting, which I thought was a necessary addition. It definitely ran the risk of poor execution, but not in this case; it managed to hold its own very well. Jordan's interlude, while still remaining as strongly written as the rest, felt as though it had its own, clear voice outside of Nick's--and that is very difficult to accomplish. I could go on about the prose for weeks, but I'll stop. Just trust that the writing alone was enough to secure Fajardo as an author I will be reading voraciously in the future. Understanding another author's style to this extent, while maintaining clear hints of one's own, is a Herculean feat. I deeply admire it.
The worldbuilding may be confusing for some, but I rather appreciated the work I had to put in on my end to understand it--that's good, that's what I want and like, especially as a frequent sci-fi/fantasy reader. It was evident there was thought put into not only how the world's "current" systems work, but how they got there in the first place. I would've loved more elaboration, but I understand how this can be limited by page counts and run a risk of, indeed, info-dumping. What matters was that it was interesting, and did a good job of setting up basic "laws" of the technology as well.
Above everything else, the characters were what really blew me away. They are, at once, the same as the original work and entirely different people. Nick remains my favourite, as he's always been (I have always thought him very intriguing, and not at all who he says he is), but the changes made him not only more entertaining, but more down-to-earth. The choice of having Nick be a person of colour and how it played a role in the way he interacted with the elite was fantastic. It created another, crucial layer on top Fitzgerald's initial critique--which, alongside the added aspects of the role of technology and the effects of late-stage capitalism, really rounded out the point of the original novel and modernised it. From the moment I heard it was a cyberpunk Great Gatsby, I knew it would work. The themes, criticism, characters, and plot of the original novel graft almost perfectly into such a setting.
It'd be a poor review if I didn't mention the relationship between Nick and Gatsby. Without saying much, as it is worth the experience, I was not only deeply invested in their development, but appreciated the quiet way it built up. There was no explicitly stated tension, and not only is that perfect for their relationship, but it is how I prefer relationships to be written in general. This was done very well, especially considering how many plot points and other relationships had to be juggled. (Also a bisexual Nick has always made sense to me, I thought the same when I read the original work. I also appreciate that the scene in Chapter 2 of the original work was properly understood. Glad we all agree that's what Fitzgerald was implying.)
Local Heavens is timely, but more than that, it is aware the reader does not need to be badgered with quotables and dialogue stating the obvious. The disastrous effects of capitalism are clear even before Nick sets foot in the cyberpunk version of the Valley of Ashes. Attraction between characters brims under the surface, unsaid, for hundreds of pages before it releases. Every scene is exquisitely written. Quite frankly, this is the exact kind of book I not only want to read, but write myself. I can't stress enough how much I recommend it, if not for your own love of The Great Gatsby, but then for your enjoyment.
Want to read
November 18, 2024I am sooo excited for this! I am incredibly happy for Kris.
March 31, 2025
This book is the most stunning book I have ever read!
First of all, the cover is magnificent, and the cover artist should get a raise for this one! That is what caught my eye first, and I am glad it did!
Then, we have the story itself.
The world building is unique, and unlike anything I have read before in my history of reading. Sci-fi can be a little hard to get into, but the author made it seem easy enough by explaining what needed to be known, when it needed to be known.
I came from the author’s YouTube channel, and I can’t believe I got to read the story early! I will read this author’s grocery list, and will definitely be picking up her next works!
Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for an Advanced Readers Copy.
First of all, the cover is magnificent, and the cover artist should get a raise for this one! That is what caught my eye first, and I am glad it did!
Then, we have the story itself.
The world building is unique, and unlike anything I have read before in my history of reading. Sci-fi can be a little hard to get into, but the author made it seem easy enough by explaining what needed to be known, when it needed to be known.
I came from the author’s YouTube channel, and I can’t believe I got to read the story early! I will read this author’s grocery list, and will definitely be picking up her next works!
Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for an Advanced Readers Copy.
Want to read
June 27, 2025I follow this author on YouTube and am so fortunate to also have the ARC! Super excited
May 26, 2025
How appropriate that this cyber-punk futuristic retelling of The Great Gatsby come out the year the famous novel turns 100 years old. The characters and world that author have built are hazy, mysterious, rich and sticky - blurring the lines between physical and virtual realities in a way that make the whole novel feel like a dream. The pages are packed with a slow burn tension that takes a long time to explode, but the meander of the first 3/4 of the novel are anything but boring as we learn what a futuristic New York might be like 50 years into the future. True to the messages and meaning of the original, Local Heavens imagines what human ambition and exploitation might look like as we fast forward through time. If you are a fan of the original Gatsby, and want to experience a familiar story in a completely wild, creative and surprising new world, Local Heavens is a must read.
Thank you to NetGalley and Bindery for the ARC in exchange for an honest review.
Thank you to NetGalley and Bindery for the ARC in exchange for an honest review.
March 10, 2025
Read for work, we love you gay nick caraway
July 2, 2025
Hmm…complicated feelings about this one (so I wrote an essay).
So first, I did my self-imposed homework and re-read The Great Gatsby right before diving (lol) into this one. Consequently, all similarities and differences between the two narratives were immediately obvious—which led me to question: how close should a retelling be? We retell fairytales, but fairytales are archetypal and so firmly stamped in the cultural landscape that we associate crumbling towers with princesses, red cloaks with wolves, gingerbread with evil witches, and so on; they’re made to be retold. But this isn’t a fairytale. In fact, it’s the antithesis of a fairytale. Any hope to be found is in the margins, in what we take away as Nick reflects on the futility of it all, on the dreams that are always a little out of reach, but that we as humans can’t seem to stop trying to grasp.
Gatsby is a strange one. 100 years old as of 2025, and arguably Fitzgerald’s magnum opus, it marks a shift in his philosophy from his first novel This Side of Paradise. While disillusionment permeates both novels, there’s a certain maturity to Gatsby that reveals the change in his internal dilemmas, and it’s strange and beautiful to witness a century later.
Some classics hold their relevance for decades, others for centuries. It’s too soon to know for certain how long Gatsby will endure, but it’s safe to say a century on that everything Fitzgerald said (and with such brevity!) is just as important and accurate now as it was then. And in 180 pages, that disillusionment and insight wrapped in gossamer packaging is something I doubt we’ll ever see again. (I, sadly, am a cynic, but I hope to be proven wrong.)
All that to say, adapting a new version of Gatsby is a tall order to fill.
While I can’t speak for those who never read The Great Gatsby, for me Local Heavens doesn’t quite stand up as its own story simply because it leans so heavily on the original. I wonder what someone who read Local Heavens first and Gatsby second would have to say about the similarities, because to me they were at best distracting and at worst a crutch. So where do we draw the line? Where does a story become its own story, an homage to the original and not just a pale imitation? Truly, I’ve no idea. (As I’m drafting a very loose Wizard of Oz retelling, I’ve thought about this A LOT.)
The prose is overall good, and I sensed the author trying to imitate Fitzgerald’s style, but unfortunately, I didn’t feel as immersed in this world as I did in Fitzgerald’s, and I attribute this to the writing not being quite as evocative or sensory, but rather flatter and more distant, though there are times when I found it very effective (mainly in scenes between Nick and Gatsby). I think also at times the metaphors felt not necessarily bad, but out of place. (I also just read some amazing prose writers on a semi-regular basis and compare everything to them, so most newer books just don’t scratch that itch, and I admit I’m super picky about it. Thy mileage will vary. This is still better writing than I’ve seen from many recently published books.) Still, it’s harder to picture this world, which feels in some ways a bit generic sci-fi and less unique to the story than it should (I watched two episodes of Andor a day or so before starting this and felt as if I could interchange the landscapes). But then, I’m not as well-versed in Cyberpunk and my favorite sci-fi tends to lean to the weird. (Again, thy mileage will vary.)
On setting, I didn’t get a great sense of what it was like to dive into cyberspace, or the war that apparently involved a lot of this(?), or why it’s so dangerous; glimpses, yes, but no stakes aside from one scene with Owl Eyes (a character I didn’t enjoy much here, sadly). It’s difficult at times to follow the ‘tech talk’ and to be honest, it’s probably the least interesting part of this book. I’m not sure how much of that is just me (a modest reader of this genre) or if it’s something that will be an issue for a lot of people, so…mileage. Nick is also supposed to be a corporate spy, but this storyline feels flimsy by the midway point and lacks tension for its entirety.
The dialogue is at times word for word from Gatsby, and aside from that it feels a bit mixed in how it melds with the world. Likewise, there are times when it becomes too expository. I was also surprised that certain characteristics, like Gatsby’s habit of calling everyone ‘old sport,’ were not replaced with terminology more fitting to the setting. This comes off as a missed opportunity.
There’s also a tendency in the writing to explain where no explanation is necessary, rather, to tell something that’s already been shown via subtext. I love subtext. It lets the words breathe. It pirouettes what’s said into something new and meaningful that will look just a little different to every person. Gatsby is full of it, and here we are a century later still obsessed. Subtext holds just as much power as the words themselves. Unfortunately, there were so many times where what could have been a really impactful scene ended up falling flat because of explanations tacked on.
As for characters, it’s a mixed bag. I generally enjoyed the changes here, but I had a hard time buying some of the flip-flopping that goes on in the second half of the book with who has feelings for who (also some of the behavior in general just didn’t add up to me by the last quarter and devolves into melodrama). I’d say the buildup to these things is decent, but not great, and so I questioned it several times. I believe the issues I had here are a byproduct of keeping some of the same dialogue, same plot points, but making tweaks—sometimes it works smoothly, and sometimes it doesn’t. Nick as a character is a bit static here, and while that's not necessarily bad (I'm happier when I see the ways a retelling tries to be its own thing), I can't help comparing him to OG Nick, who becomes more cynical as the plot progresses (and thus the ending hits harder thematically). This Nick feels cynical from the get-go, which makes his reactions to later events fall flat in some ways. While I don't think they should be the same character--obviously--I also don't always get the sense that this Nick (or any of the other characters) are as well rendered and dimensional as they could be. It seems like they're halfway who they were in the OG version and halfway new characters, but that crucial blending (how they exist in this specific world at this specific time) isn't always there. That said, the highlight of the latter half is definitely the developing relationship between Nick and Gatsby, and I’ll admit…the ending kind of got me, even if part of it felt off in the very last bit (maybe too close to the original, and I think it could have bloomed into something new there; or hell, maybe I just want them to have a happier ending).
I keep thinking of this comment I read in a review (for a totally different book) about the writing being nice but lacking substance. It’s sort of how I felt about This is How You Lose the Time War, word salad thrown together to sound cool but hiding flat characters and an incredibly shallow story that mostly comes off as generic in the end. Contrast that with my favorite read this year, Roadside Picnic, which has competent, raw writing that doesn’t try to be pretty but does manage to unsettle and immerse. Not only is that book one of the best and most subtle commentaries on commodification I’ve ever read, it’s also emotionally devastating, and I still think about it almost daily months later.
For me, Local Heavens resides somewhere between Time War and RP (notably, all three novels are sci-fi) in its writing and what it seems to be trying to do. It’s more coherent and readable than TW but lacks the raw beauty and philosophical depth of RP. It suffers a bit from a trend where so much of the narrative seems to be carried by vibes and aesthetics, but doesn’t probe beyond the surface, or gives the most obvious commentary that we’ve all heard before, ad nauseum. Yes, corporations are exploitative. Yes, the rich tend to get richer at the expense of the poor. In the instances where Nick is talking with Owl Eyes, the revolutionary/rebel talk felt like something I’d seen before many times. Tale as old as time, as they say. Tell me more, make it unique, make it something I haven’t seen or heard before, or at least give me a remix that I can really believe in. I admire the effort, but we’re only scratching the surface here. And I’ll say here that what I enjoyed most thematically (and imo, what carried the most depth) was the use of names (that scene!), false names and true names, and names we use like armor or cloaks to conceal our innermost selves. That aspect was lovely.
It feels like this is attempting to be in conversation with the original, but the author mentions not needing to read Gatsby to understand this. So I’m a little confused about where it all stands. Its very existence and how much it borrows from Gatsby kind of demands comparison, which is unfortunate, but even if you write the loosest retelling ever, you’re going to invite that. It’s as inevitable as taxes. And I think what it comes down to is that a lot of this feels like a futuristic aesthetic superimposed over the same story that still comes off very 1920s so that at times it’s easy to forget this is the 2070s (the last quarter was the most futuristic to me and where I felt most immersed). To bring in my handy old metaphor, it’s like the author threw Gatsby and various sci-fi elements in a blender but rather than a smooth, well-blended concoction, there are a lot of chunks floating around. People are still using the same curse words, the same mannerisms…and I guess it’s plausible, but just think how much those things change between one decade, let alone fifteen. It’s possible to look perpetually in your 30s but Alzheimer’s hasn’t been cured? Bodies are modified, but what effect does that have on hunger, on the desire for intimacy? Time and circumstances alter people on more than just the individual level. We make fun of each other by the generation for a reason, characterize ourselves by what we do or don’t care about as a collective, but that only occasionally feels touched on here.
So…I definitely didn’t dislike this book (like I said, the ending got me, and I enjoyed the name part), but I also didn’t like it as much as I wanted to, as I’m sure others will. Gatsby is one of my favorites, top 5 easily. And while fantasy and lit fic are my most-read genres, I like and occasionally love sci-fi. I was primed for this. And like I said, it’s readable, and there are some lovely lines and beautiful thoughts to be found in the pages. I just wanted more of that.
But in the end, I come away thinking just a little more about what it could have been rather than what it is, and I guess that means I’m floating in the margins, suspended by the potential.
Thanks to NetGalley and Bindery for the ARC
So first, I did my self-imposed homework and re-read The Great Gatsby right before diving (lol) into this one. Consequently, all similarities and differences between the two narratives were immediately obvious—which led me to question: how close should a retelling be? We retell fairytales, but fairytales are archetypal and so firmly stamped in the cultural landscape that we associate crumbling towers with princesses, red cloaks with wolves, gingerbread with evil witches, and so on; they’re made to be retold. But this isn’t a fairytale. In fact, it’s the antithesis of a fairytale. Any hope to be found is in the margins, in what we take away as Nick reflects on the futility of it all, on the dreams that are always a little out of reach, but that we as humans can’t seem to stop trying to grasp.
Gatsby is a strange one. 100 years old as of 2025, and arguably Fitzgerald’s magnum opus, it marks a shift in his philosophy from his first novel This Side of Paradise. While disillusionment permeates both novels, there’s a certain maturity to Gatsby that reveals the change in his internal dilemmas, and it’s strange and beautiful to witness a century later.
Some classics hold their relevance for decades, others for centuries. It’s too soon to know for certain how long Gatsby will endure, but it’s safe to say a century on that everything Fitzgerald said (and with such brevity!) is just as important and accurate now as it was then. And in 180 pages, that disillusionment and insight wrapped in gossamer packaging is something I doubt we’ll ever see again. (I, sadly, am a cynic, but I hope to be proven wrong.)
All that to say, adapting a new version of Gatsby is a tall order to fill.
While I can’t speak for those who never read The Great Gatsby, for me Local Heavens doesn’t quite stand up as its own story simply because it leans so heavily on the original. I wonder what someone who read Local Heavens first and Gatsby second would have to say about the similarities, because to me they were at best distracting and at worst a crutch. So where do we draw the line? Where does a story become its own story, an homage to the original and not just a pale imitation? Truly, I’ve no idea. (As I’m drafting a very loose Wizard of Oz retelling, I’ve thought about this A LOT.)
The prose is overall good, and I sensed the author trying to imitate Fitzgerald’s style, but unfortunately, I didn’t feel as immersed in this world as I did in Fitzgerald’s, and I attribute this to the writing not being quite as evocative or sensory, but rather flatter and more distant, though there are times when I found it very effective (mainly in scenes between Nick and Gatsby). I think also at times the metaphors felt not necessarily bad, but out of place. (I also just read some amazing prose writers on a semi-regular basis and compare everything to them, so most newer books just don’t scratch that itch, and I admit I’m super picky about it. Thy mileage will vary. This is still better writing than I’ve seen from many recently published books.) Still, it’s harder to picture this world, which feels in some ways a bit generic sci-fi and less unique to the story than it should (I watched two episodes of Andor a day or so before starting this and felt as if I could interchange the landscapes). But then, I’m not as well-versed in Cyberpunk and my favorite sci-fi tends to lean to the weird. (Again, thy mileage will vary.)
On setting, I didn’t get a great sense of what it was like to dive into cyberspace, or the war that apparently involved a lot of this(?), or why it’s so dangerous; glimpses, yes, but no stakes aside from one scene with Owl Eyes (a character I didn’t enjoy much here, sadly). It’s difficult at times to follow the ‘tech talk’ and to be honest, it’s probably the least interesting part of this book. I’m not sure how much of that is just me (a modest reader of this genre) or if it’s something that will be an issue for a lot of people, so…mileage. Nick is also supposed to be a corporate spy, but this storyline feels flimsy by the midway point and lacks tension for its entirety.
The dialogue is at times word for word from Gatsby, and aside from that it feels a bit mixed in how it melds with the world. Likewise, there are times when it becomes too expository. I was also surprised that certain characteristics, like Gatsby’s habit of calling everyone ‘old sport,’ were not replaced with terminology more fitting to the setting. This comes off as a missed opportunity.
There’s also a tendency in the writing to explain where no explanation is necessary, rather, to tell something that’s already been shown via subtext. I love subtext. It lets the words breathe. It pirouettes what’s said into something new and meaningful that will look just a little different to every person. Gatsby is full of it, and here we are a century later still obsessed. Subtext holds just as much power as the words themselves. Unfortunately, there were so many times where what could have been a really impactful scene ended up falling flat because of explanations tacked on.
As for characters, it’s a mixed bag. I generally enjoyed the changes here, but I had a hard time buying some of the flip-flopping that goes on in the second half of the book with who has feelings for who (also some of the behavior in general just didn’t add up to me by the last quarter and devolves into melodrama). I’d say the buildup to these things is decent, but not great, and so I questioned it several times. I believe the issues I had here are a byproduct of keeping some of the same dialogue, same plot points, but making tweaks—sometimes it works smoothly, and sometimes it doesn’t. Nick as a character is a bit static here, and while that's not necessarily bad (I'm happier when I see the ways a retelling tries to be its own thing), I can't help comparing him to OG Nick, who becomes more cynical as the plot progresses (and thus the ending hits harder thematically). This Nick feels cynical from the get-go, which makes his reactions to later events fall flat in some ways. While I don't think they should be the same character--obviously--I also don't always get the sense that this Nick (or any of the other characters) are as well rendered and dimensional as they could be. It seems like they're halfway who they were in the OG version and halfway new characters, but that crucial blending (how they exist in this specific world at this specific time) isn't always there. That said, the highlight of the latter half is definitely the developing relationship between Nick and Gatsby, and I’ll admit…the ending kind of got me, even if part of it felt off in the very last bit (maybe too close to the original, and I think it could have bloomed into something new there; or hell, maybe I just want them to have a happier ending).
I keep thinking of this comment I read in a review (for a totally different book) about the writing being nice but lacking substance. It’s sort of how I felt about This is How You Lose the Time War, word salad thrown together to sound cool but hiding flat characters and an incredibly shallow story that mostly comes off as generic in the end. Contrast that with my favorite read this year, Roadside Picnic, which has competent, raw writing that doesn’t try to be pretty but does manage to unsettle and immerse. Not only is that book one of the best and most subtle commentaries on commodification I’ve ever read, it’s also emotionally devastating, and I still think about it almost daily months later.
For me, Local Heavens resides somewhere between Time War and RP (notably, all three novels are sci-fi) in its writing and what it seems to be trying to do. It’s more coherent and readable than TW but lacks the raw beauty and philosophical depth of RP. It suffers a bit from a trend where so much of the narrative seems to be carried by vibes and aesthetics, but doesn’t probe beyond the surface, or gives the most obvious commentary that we’ve all heard before, ad nauseum. Yes, corporations are exploitative. Yes, the rich tend to get richer at the expense of the poor. In the instances where Nick is talking with Owl Eyes, the revolutionary/rebel talk felt like something I’d seen before many times. Tale as old as time, as they say. Tell me more, make it unique, make it something I haven’t seen or heard before, or at least give me a remix that I can really believe in. I admire the effort, but we’re only scratching the surface here. And I’ll say here that what I enjoyed most thematically (and imo, what carried the most depth) was the use of names (that scene!), false names and true names, and names we use like armor or cloaks to conceal our innermost selves. That aspect was lovely.
It feels like this is attempting to be in conversation with the original, but the author mentions not needing to read Gatsby to understand this. So I’m a little confused about where it all stands. Its very existence and how much it borrows from Gatsby kind of demands comparison, which is unfortunate, but even if you write the loosest retelling ever, you’re going to invite that. It’s as inevitable as taxes. And I think what it comes down to is that a lot of this feels like a futuristic aesthetic superimposed over the same story that still comes off very 1920s so that at times it’s easy to forget this is the 2070s (the last quarter was the most futuristic to me and where I felt most immersed). To bring in my handy old metaphor, it’s like the author threw Gatsby and various sci-fi elements in a blender but rather than a smooth, well-blended concoction, there are a lot of chunks floating around. People are still using the same curse words, the same mannerisms…and I guess it’s plausible, but just think how much those things change between one decade, let alone fifteen. It’s possible to look perpetually in your 30s but Alzheimer’s hasn’t been cured? Bodies are modified, but what effect does that have on hunger, on the desire for intimacy? Time and circumstances alter people on more than just the individual level. We make fun of each other by the generation for a reason, characterize ourselves by what we do or don’t care about as a collective, but that only occasionally feels touched on here.
So…I definitely didn’t dislike this book (like I said, the ending got me, and I enjoyed the name part), but I also didn’t like it as much as I wanted to, as I’m sure others will. Gatsby is one of my favorites, top 5 easily. And while fantasy and lit fic are my most-read genres, I like and occasionally love sci-fi. I was primed for this. And like I said, it’s readable, and there are some lovely lines and beautiful thoughts to be found in the pages. I just wanted more of that.
But in the end, I come away thinking just a little more about what it could have been rather than what it is, and I guess that means I’m floating in the margins, suspended by the potential.
Thanks to NetGalley and Bindery for the ARC
March 24, 2025
Local Heavens is one of those rare books that stops you in your tracks, again and again, with devastating lines and gut-punching twists.
The prose is lush, immersive, and electric, pulling you straight into the story, walking beside Nick Carraway and feeling everything he feels—joy, anger, fear. Each character is given new depth, both lovingly and critically.
You might be skeptical about a cyberpunk retelling of The Great Gatsby. But trust me—it WORKS. I was blown away by how this version remains faithful to the original’s commentary on class, wealth, and morality, while making the story entirely its own.
Simply put: this is essential reading. It belongs in classrooms, book clubs, bookstores, and beyond. We need books like this.
Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for an Advanced Reader Copy in exchange for my honest review.
The prose is lush, immersive, and electric, pulling you straight into the story, walking beside Nick Carraway and feeling everything he feels—joy, anger, fear. Each character is given new depth, both lovingly and critically.
You might be skeptical about a cyberpunk retelling of The Great Gatsby. But trust me—it WORKS. I was blown away by how this version remains faithful to the original’s commentary on class, wealth, and morality, while making the story entirely its own.
Simply put: this is essential reading. It belongs in classrooms, book clubs, bookstores, and beyond. We need books like this.
Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for an Advanced Reader Copy in exchange for my honest review.
April 10, 2025
I hadn’t read The Great Gatsby before getting into Local Heavens so I didn’t know all that much about what to expect and I’ll have to say I was pleasantly surprised! Honestly, I’m pretty sure I prefer this version than the classic. I love queerness.
The world building particularly was very engaging, it took me a while to get into it and understand it but that may be personal.
Nick was a very interesting character in the way that he didn’t have the personality of a "savior" and the standard hero persona of protagonists in dystopian-ish scenario. It was refreshing that the characters all felt very realistic, some rather morally grey or straight up bad people as well.
The romance was pretty well-written as well although somewhat questionable at times in my opinion but i won’t elaborate because I want to remain spoiler-free. It definitely got me very invested at times, I loved the tension.
Some parts of the book got me way more engaged than others which is why i didn’t give it a 5-star rating but it was definitely a read I will remember for a long time due to its originality.
Thank you Netgalley and the publisher for sending me an ARC in exchange for a honest review.
The world building particularly was very engaging, it took me a while to get into it and understand it but that may be personal.
Nick was a very interesting character in the way that he didn’t have the personality of a "savior" and the standard hero persona of protagonists in dystopian-ish scenario. It was refreshing that the characters all felt very realistic, some rather morally grey or straight up bad people as well.
The romance was pretty well-written as well although somewhat questionable at times in my opinion but i won’t elaborate because I want to remain spoiler-free. It definitely got me very invested at times, I loved the tension.
Some parts of the book got me way more engaged than others which is why i didn’t give it a 5-star rating but it was definitely a read I will remember for a long time due to its originality.
Thank you Netgalley and the publisher for sending me an ARC in exchange for a honest review.
July 11, 2025
LOCAL HEAVENS is the queer, cyberpunk gatsby retelling of my dreams—a feverish, sensual, and decadent hover car ride through the american capitalist nightmare. fajardo's debut captures the spirit of fitzgerald's classic perfectly, mirroring the beauty of his language and dreamy severity of his characters, while effortlessly moving the story into a plausible, technology-ruled future that's as harrowing as it is promising, ripping open the chest of late-stage capitalism and performing an autopsy on its rotten, glittering heart.
the 2070s of fajardo's new york city is a world of surreal body modifications, billionaire corpos, disillusioned celebrities, and all the ordinary people whose lives are crushed by capitalism as those at the top thrive off their misery, exposing the blood that keeps america running—asking if you can see it, asking if you care. in LOCAL HEAVENS, nick carraway is a filipino-american corporate hacker, jay gatsby is an elusive billionaire, daisy fay is a filipino-american retired star of technological dream simulations, and jordan baker is a nigerian-american bullet-golf champion. a love square connects the four of them, and fajardo uses the beauty and tragedy of their relationships to explore humanity on both intimate and grand scales—from the delicate dance between strangers to exploring proof of life beyond earth.
LOCAL HEAVENS retains the spirit of fitzgerald's novel while imagining it anew in clever, revelatory ways that will redefine what it means to take a timeless classic and transmute its heart for the future it gazed into. the essence of the great gatsby is more relevant than ever in fajardo's hands: her world is the one we're already living in, but with our fears and dreams dialed as high as possible. it's a prophetic scream from a hacked security system, set to a jazz number. fajardo has written a gorgeous, sleek, and unforgettable debut right on time for the great gatsby's centennial anniversary, and i can't recommend it highly enough. LOCAL HEAVENS is going to haunt me for a very long time, and ensured that i'll follow fajardo anywhere in the world.
LOCAL HEAVENS hits shelves on october 14! it's available for preorder now, and if you needed a literal green light to convince you, here it is! go forth, old sport.
the 2070s of fajardo's new york city is a world of surreal body modifications, billionaire corpos, disillusioned celebrities, and all the ordinary people whose lives are crushed by capitalism as those at the top thrive off their misery, exposing the blood that keeps america running—asking if you can see it, asking if you care. in LOCAL HEAVENS, nick carraway is a filipino-american corporate hacker, jay gatsby is an elusive billionaire, daisy fay is a filipino-american retired star of technological dream simulations, and jordan baker is a nigerian-american bullet-golf champion. a love square connects the four of them, and fajardo uses the beauty and tragedy of their relationships to explore humanity on both intimate and grand scales—from the delicate dance between strangers to exploring proof of life beyond earth.
LOCAL HEAVENS retains the spirit of fitzgerald's novel while imagining it anew in clever, revelatory ways that will redefine what it means to take a timeless classic and transmute its heart for the future it gazed into. the essence of the great gatsby is more relevant than ever in fajardo's hands: her world is the one we're already living in, but with our fears and dreams dialed as high as possible. it's a prophetic scream from a hacked security system, set to a jazz number. fajardo has written a gorgeous, sleek, and unforgettable debut right on time for the great gatsby's centennial anniversary, and i can't recommend it highly enough. LOCAL HEAVENS is going to haunt me for a very long time, and ensured that i'll follow fajardo anywhere in the world.
LOCAL HEAVENS hits shelves on october 14! it's available for preorder now, and if you needed a literal green light to convince you, here it is! go forth, old sport.
March 31, 2025
Glitzy and brimming with intrigue, Local Heavens is the queer cyberpunk Gatsby remix I didn’t know I needed. Fajardo has built a dazzlingly unique world that is still as close to the Roaring Twenties as it is to our own times, and she has breathed new life into this classic tale about ambition and the American Dream.
June 22, 2025
**1.5 stars**
Thank you to Netgalley and Bindery books for the ARC.
I want to start this off by saying that I was really excited for this book, and this was an anticipated read for me. It didn’t live up to what I was expecting. However, I do believe there is an audience out here for this. Despite my complaints, I would still recommend this to people that enjoy love squares and prefer their sci-fi elements to be more atmospheric than the main focus.
To start off, I think the synopsis does a disservice to what’s in the book. The synopsis appears to very centered around Nick and Gatsby and around a mysterious dilemma about “dark affairs.” Their coupling later does become integral to the plot, but much of the book is revolved around a love square, a very annoying love square with characters that were, in my opinion, unlikeable and one-dimensional. And I get that was the point. These characters were supposed to be unlikeable, but it was just difficult to understand why anyone was doing what they were doing. By the way, I think the love square should be hinted at in the synopsis. People who enjoy those plots can find this book and add it to their TBR list. Nick’s motivations were just him doing his job at first, Daisy and Gatsby were trying to meet again and used Nick to do so, and Jordan was there. She was in love with Daisy, dated Nick, and did bullet golf. That was all there was for her character—no substantial plots. Oh, and then there was Tom. He was a cheater like in the original and was there to be insufferable. He didn’t do anything other than complain. Also, for a character that is focal point to everything, Gatsby is not introduced until over 70-80 pages in. A big mistake, in my opinion.
The pacing was slow, as in it felt like the first 60 percent of the book was just filler—nothing substantial was happening. And that’s the thing: this book lacks a lot of substance. There was so much telling and exposition and a lot of unexciting monologuing. It felt like the author didn’t trust readers to figure things out. The themes were explained to us repetitively. Many people know capitalism is terrible. Classism sucks and is gross. But why can’t these themes be extrapolated by what happens in the story? Majority of chapters ended at weird places, and then the following chapter would happen and it would feel like what just happened didn’t matter anymore. Nick, as a narrator, felt very in the moment, which is fine I guess. From my perspective, Nick’s narrator voice would’ve better fit in a plot-driven novel over a character-driven one, but this one was a very character-focused book, so there was this feeling of blah…like does anything even matter? Events would occur, and then it would be onto the next thing without much thought about what just happened. Another thing that felt lackluster was the beginning of Gatsby and Nick’s relationship. Much of their introduction and initial getting-to-know-each-other phase was told and not shown. There would be monologues of Nick describing afternoons and outings with Gatsby. It was just a strange choice based on the synopsis and how the book ends. The dialogue was another issue I saw. It didn’t sound like how real people would talk. Sometimes, characters would sound too preachy or philosophical suddenly—these characters would usually be random minor characters. This usually left the impression the author wanted to exposit the themes through said character. The quarrel between Nick, Daisy, Jordan, Gatsby, and Tom in the suite room was so, so melodramatic. There was an outpour of emotion and anger, but it felt unnatural. There was no up and down to the conversation, no pause, nobody attempted to collect themselves. At one point, Tom physically attacks Nick, Gatsby defends him, etcetera. Afterwards, Nick is staring out the window, and then another character who is supposed to be his sorta girlfriend comes up to him, and asks, “What is it?” It was bizarre. Did what happen actually just happen? Was I being gaslit by a book? It might have been intended from the author’s end for Nick to appear like he saw something outside the window, hence the question. I’m not sure. All I know was that it was weird and made me doubt what I just read. I think this book was too long considering the events. Not much happened from the beginning to the middle, there was a rush of occurrences that happened toward the end, and then a character died. There was another, I believe, 40-50 pages after that. The E-book ARC I received was 455 pages, so I’m not sure if that will be the final page count. But yikes was it long, long. I wanted to briefly mention the end, not in detail though. If you read the original Great Gatsby, Daisy’s plot is nearly verbatim, except with a sci-fi twist. As much as I enjoyed the sci-fi worldbuilding, I think Daisy’s plot creates a major plot hole. It’s just unbelievable the events would have the same fallout in a world where characters have comms, there’s likely surveillance everywhere, potential witnesses. It worked in The Great Gatsby, since the story was set in 1920s, but it just doesn’t make sense in a futuristic setting. There are endless ways for her to get caught. I do want to talk about the things I liked. I enjoyed the creativity behind the worldbuilding and setting. I thought Happy Sleeps were an interesting concept, the physicality regarding netdiving was intriguing. There were occasional good descriptions. I thought the memory implant subplot was really cool, and wished it would’ve been more of the focus at times, especially considering the ending. The implementation of Filipino culture was also a positive here. I think this author has a lot of potential, so I hope to check out what they do next.
Thank you to Netgalley and Bindery books for the ARC.
I want to start this off by saying that I was really excited for this book, and this was an anticipated read for me. It didn’t live up to what I was expecting. However, I do believe there is an audience out here for this. Despite my complaints, I would still recommend this to people that enjoy love squares and prefer their sci-fi elements to be more atmospheric than the main focus.
To start off, I think the synopsis does a disservice to what’s in the book. The synopsis appears to very centered around Nick and Gatsby and around a mysterious dilemma about “dark affairs.” Their coupling later does become integral to the plot, but much of the book is revolved around a love square, a very annoying love square with characters that were, in my opinion, unlikeable and one-dimensional. And I get that was the point. These characters were supposed to be unlikeable, but it was just difficult to understand why anyone was doing what they were doing. By the way, I think the love square should be hinted at in the synopsis. People who enjoy those plots can find this book and add it to their TBR list. Nick’s motivations were just him doing his job at first, Daisy and Gatsby were trying to meet again and used Nick to do so, and Jordan was there. She was in love with Daisy, dated Nick, and did bullet golf. That was all there was for her character—no substantial plots. Oh, and then there was Tom. He was a cheater like in the original and was there to be insufferable. He didn’t do anything other than complain. Also, for a character that is focal point to everything, Gatsby is not introduced until over 70-80 pages in. A big mistake, in my opinion.
The pacing was slow, as in it felt like the first 60 percent of the book was just filler—nothing substantial was happening. And that’s the thing: this book lacks a lot of substance. There was so much telling and exposition and a lot of unexciting monologuing. It felt like the author didn’t trust readers to figure things out. The themes were explained to us repetitively. Many people know capitalism is terrible. Classism sucks and is gross. But why can’t these themes be extrapolated by what happens in the story? Majority of chapters ended at weird places, and then the following chapter would happen and it would feel like what just happened didn’t matter anymore. Nick, as a narrator, felt very in the moment, which is fine I guess. From my perspective, Nick’s narrator voice would’ve better fit in a plot-driven novel over a character-driven one, but this one was a very character-focused book, so there was this feeling of blah…like does anything even matter? Events would occur, and then it would be onto the next thing without much thought about what just happened. Another thing that felt lackluster was the beginning of Gatsby and Nick’s relationship. Much of their introduction and initial getting-to-know-each-other phase was told and not shown. There would be monologues of Nick describing afternoons and outings with Gatsby. It was just a strange choice based on the synopsis and how the book ends. The dialogue was another issue I saw. It didn’t sound like how real people would talk. Sometimes, characters would sound too preachy or philosophical suddenly—these characters would usually be random minor characters. This usually left the impression the author wanted to exposit the themes through said character. The quarrel between Nick, Daisy, Jordan, Gatsby, and Tom in the suite room was so, so melodramatic. There was an outpour of emotion and anger, but it felt unnatural. There was no up and down to the conversation, no pause, nobody attempted to collect themselves. At one point, Tom physically attacks Nick, Gatsby defends him, etcetera. Afterwards, Nick is staring out the window, and then another character who is supposed to be his sorta girlfriend comes up to him, and asks, “What is it?” It was bizarre. Did what happen actually just happen? Was I being gaslit by a book? It might have been intended from the author’s end for Nick to appear like he saw something outside the window, hence the question. I’m not sure. All I know was that it was weird and made me doubt what I just read. I think this book was too long considering the events. Not much happened from the beginning to the middle, there was a rush of occurrences that happened toward the end, and then a character died. There was another, I believe, 40-50 pages after that. The E-book ARC I received was 455 pages, so I’m not sure if that will be the final page count. But yikes was it long, long. I wanted to briefly mention the end, not in detail though. If you read the original Great Gatsby, Daisy’s plot is nearly verbatim, except with a sci-fi twist. As much as I enjoyed the sci-fi worldbuilding, I think Daisy’s plot creates a major plot hole. It’s just unbelievable the events would have the same fallout in a world where characters have comms, there’s likely surveillance everywhere, potential witnesses. It worked in The Great Gatsby, since the story was set in 1920s, but it just doesn’t make sense in a futuristic setting. There are endless ways for her to get caught. I do want to talk about the things I liked. I enjoyed the creativity behind the worldbuilding and setting. I thought Happy Sleeps were an interesting concept, the physicality regarding netdiving was intriguing. There were occasional good descriptions. I thought the memory implant subplot was really cool, and wished it would’ve been more of the focus at times, especially considering the ending. The implementation of Filipino culture was also a positive here. I think this author has a lot of potential, so I hope to check out what they do next.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
May 11, 2025
Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for providing me with an e-arc.
Local Heavens is a beautiful ode to the original work while still being incredibly unique and innovative all on its own. Fajardo brings a new depth and clarity to these characters, most particularly felt in her reimagination of Jordan and Wilson. There was, in my opinion, the perfect amount of cyberpunk elements to be adequate and interesting worldbuilding while still not taking away from the incredibly character driven nature of this story. I devoured this book in two days; needless to say, it was a captivating reading experience. I am looking forward to this book being on shelves later this year, and anything else to come in Fajardo's future.
Local Heavens is a beautiful ode to the original work while still being incredibly unique and innovative all on its own. Fajardo brings a new depth and clarity to these characters, most particularly felt in her reimagination of Jordan and Wilson. There was, in my opinion, the perfect amount of cyberpunk elements to be adequate and interesting worldbuilding while still not taking away from the incredibly character driven nature of this story. I devoured this book in two days; needless to say, it was a captivating reading experience. I am looking forward to this book being on shelves later this year, and anything else to come in Fajardo's future.
April 1, 2025
Thrilling, beautifully rendered, a masterful remix of Gatsby that felt completely original and ALIVE! I felt so lucky to have read this early. Cannot wait for it to find its readers. KM Fajardo has made a total fan of me.
November 19, 2024
So excited for this !!
March 22, 2025
For my fellow classic lit nerds who also deeply love blade runner: this retelling of Gatsby is great fun.
August 22, 2025
Okay—a more cohesive review than the one I posted last night, with tears still streaming down my face. Local Heavens is everything I wanted out of a Gatsby retelling. It’s beautifully written and completely accessible, while still capturing the yearning and the key touchstones of the original text.
You can really feel Fajardo’s love for The Great Gatsby and her devotion to staying true to Fitzgerald’s characters. I adored this reincarnation of Jay Gatsby and Nick Carraway, as well as Jordan, Daisy, and Tom (who remains the true villain here).
This was one of those books I woke up excited to read. It kept me glued to the pages as the tragedy spiralled downwards. Of course, I knew how it would end—I’ve read The Great Gatsby many times—but the ending of Gatsby’s life still broke me.
What I loved most about this retelling was Nick’s yearning and the way he and Gatsby circle around their attraction before finally finding love and trust in one another. It was beautifully done. This is the kind of book I wanted to squeal over with others, highlighting my favourite passages and scribbling notes in the margins. It’s so well-crafted that it makes you want to analyse it as deeply as the original.
Overall, 6 beautiful stars. One of my favourite reads of the year, and I can’t wait for others to discover this perfect book.
You can really feel Fajardo’s love for The Great Gatsby and her devotion to staying true to Fitzgerald’s characters. I adored this reincarnation of Jay Gatsby and Nick Carraway, as well as Jordan, Daisy, and Tom (who remains the true villain here).
This was one of those books I woke up excited to read. It kept me glued to the pages as the tragedy spiralled downwards. Of course, I knew how it would end—I’ve read The Great Gatsby many times—but the ending of Gatsby’s life still broke me.
What I loved most about this retelling was Nick’s yearning and the way he and Gatsby circle around their attraction before finally finding love and trust in one another. It was beautifully done. This is the kind of book I wanted to squeal over with others, highlighting my favourite passages and scribbling notes in the margins. It’s so well-crafted that it makes you want to analyse it as deeply as the original.
Overall, 6 beautiful stars. One of my favourite reads of the year, and I can’t wait for others to discover this perfect book.
May 1, 2025
DISCLAIMER: I received an advance e-copy of this book through a Bindery Books giveaway.
First off, let me say that the synopsis/descriptions/blurbs I’d read about this book prior to reading it were definitely intriguing (this book has been on my TBR pretty much since it was announced by The Inky Phoenix), but they don’t do this book justice. This book is so much more than what I expected. I definitely stayed up way past my bedtime (“Just one more chapter!”) to finish this book.
In addition to reading The Great Gatsby, I’ve also read a number of retellings/re-imaginings (The Chosen and the Beautiful, Beautiful Little Fools, Self-Made Boys, and Wild and Wicked Things, as far as I remember). As much as I enjoyed some of them, none were as good as Local Heavens. One issue I often had with the other re-imaginings I read were that the authors, in an attempt to make some of the characters more sympathetic, ended up making them less interesting. Or sometimes the authors tried to stay too close to the original novel, even when it didn’t entirely make sense for the retelling. Somehow, K.M. Fajardo manages to make a character like Daisy sympathetic, while keeping her complexity and not glossing over her flaws. Similarly, even though this story is set in a cyberpunk semi-apocalyptic-ish future, the allusions and references from the original novel are perfectly done. They’re placed in just the right moments and never pull you out of the current story.
Local Heavens is wildly original and I think that’s a big part of what makes this re-imagining work. Fajardo very much tells her own version of Gatsby, set in a completely different world, and weaves her own themes to make it feel fresh and so very, very relevant. (I found Tom’s character especially representative of some of the BS we’re dealing with these days.) Even though I didn’t fully understand the backdrop at first and it felt a little bit like I was dropped in the middle of a foreign planet, it was well-done enough that I could follow along as things were shown and explained in more detail. The themes of “the American nightmare” and colonialism/imperialism, while not always explicit, were a constant undercurrent throughout the book, reminding you why certain things played out the way they did. Fajardo’s world-building was subtle and highly effective.
What made this book stand out the most to me were the characters and their relationships to each other. Of course, all the subtext between Daisy and Jordan and between Gatsby and Nick is still present. But they’re tragic stories. There’s no HEA between the couples, much like there was no HEA at the end of the original. Fajardo allows her characters to be flawed and broken and while I personally crave HEAs these days, the way things concluded were perfect for the story.
The only minor quibble I have is that the formatting issues in an advance e-copy made it a little hard to read, especially deciphering who was saying what in conversations, but that has nothing to do with the substance of the book itself.
First off, let me say that the synopsis/descriptions/blurbs I’d read about this book prior to reading it were definitely intriguing (this book has been on my TBR pretty much since it was announced by The Inky Phoenix), but they don’t do this book justice. This book is so much more than what I expected. I definitely stayed up way past my bedtime (“Just one more chapter!”) to finish this book.
In addition to reading The Great Gatsby, I’ve also read a number of retellings/re-imaginings (The Chosen and the Beautiful, Beautiful Little Fools, Self-Made Boys, and Wild and Wicked Things, as far as I remember). As much as I enjoyed some of them, none were as good as Local Heavens. One issue I often had with the other re-imaginings I read were that the authors, in an attempt to make some of the characters more sympathetic, ended up making them less interesting. Or sometimes the authors tried to stay too close to the original novel, even when it didn’t entirely make sense for the retelling. Somehow, K.M. Fajardo manages to make a character like Daisy sympathetic, while keeping her complexity and not glossing over her flaws. Similarly, even though this story is set in a cyberpunk semi-apocalyptic-ish future, the allusions and references from the original novel are perfectly done. They’re placed in just the right moments and never pull you out of the current story.
Local Heavens is wildly original and I think that’s a big part of what makes this re-imagining work. Fajardo very much tells her own version of Gatsby, set in a completely different world, and weaves her own themes to make it feel fresh and so very, very relevant. (I found Tom’s character especially representative of some of the BS we’re dealing with these days.) Even though I didn’t fully understand the backdrop at first and it felt a little bit like I was dropped in the middle of a foreign planet, it was well-done enough that I could follow along as things were shown and explained in more detail. The themes of “the American nightmare” and colonialism/imperialism, while not always explicit, were a constant undercurrent throughout the book, reminding you why certain things played out the way they did. Fajardo’s world-building was subtle and highly effective.
What made this book stand out the most to me were the characters and their relationships to each other. Of course, all the subtext between Daisy and Jordan and between Gatsby and Nick is still present. But they’re tragic stories. There’s no HEA between the couples, much like there was no HEA at the end of the original. Fajardo allows her characters to be flawed and broken and while I personally crave HEAs these days, the way things concluded were perfect for the story.
The only minor quibble I have is that the formatting issues in an advance e-copy made it a little hard to read, especially deciphering who was saying what in conversations, but that has nothing to do with the substance of the book itself.
July 19, 2025
local heavens is a brilliant tribute to fitzgerald’s magnum opus, and the great gatsby is perhaps my favorite book ever, so i do not say this lightly. fitzgerald’s prose is something that cannot be truly replicated, but fajardo does an amazing job with the language and atmosphere while adding a twist to the story. although local heavens is set in the 2070s, a century and a half after the events of the great gatsby, its overarching message and overall ambience is still reminiscent of the original.
what i think made the great gatsby so special to me was the complexity of its characters and their relationships with each other and the world, and local heavens is the closest i’ve ever gotten to reading something that resembles the magic of the great gatsby. nick carraway was always my favorite character and local heavens’ nick is no exception; i loved the interconnection of cultures and ideals in his character. gatsby was perfect and daisy was so flawed i adored her character so much #istandwithmycancelledwife
the worldbuilding in this book was absolutely insane. everything was so clearly thought out and fajardo’s way of portraying it was so vivid but didn’t feel thrust in my face at all. i’ve never been a particularly big fan of dystopia (i still am not) but local heavens absolutely blew me out of the water and it was just so?? realistic?? fajardo doesn’t shy away from dissecting capitalism and wealth and privilege even in the cyberpunk world and it was so intriguing to read about (especially considering the state of our world rn)
local heavens is genuinely such an impressive debut & i look forward (am gnawing at the cages of my enclosure) to reading more of the author’s work!
thank you to netgalley for the arc!
‘it was strange to observe—not because i believed in magic, but rather because a part of me, right up until the end, had still believed in “gatsby.”’
‘buildings grew taller, slums grew wider, bodies younger and souls colder, and at the end of it all, we had moved far from the society we’d been when the probe first launched, its romance diminished with each generation under the growing cynicism of our declining nations.’
what i think made the great gatsby so special to me was the complexity of its characters and their relationships with each other and the world, and local heavens is the closest i’ve ever gotten to reading something that resembles the magic of the great gatsby. nick carraway was always my favorite character and local heavens’ nick is no exception; i loved the interconnection of cultures and ideals in his character. gatsby was perfect and daisy was so flawed i adored her character so much #istandwithmycancelledwife
the worldbuilding in this book was absolutely insane. everything was so clearly thought out and fajardo’s way of portraying it was so vivid but didn’t feel thrust in my face at all. i’ve never been a particularly big fan of dystopia (i still am not) but local heavens absolutely blew me out of the water and it was just so?? realistic?? fajardo doesn’t shy away from dissecting capitalism and wealth and privilege even in the cyberpunk world and it was so intriguing to read about (especially considering the state of our world rn)
‘it was an odd thing to see an android hesitate—a small but devastating trick of technology that replicated the very human instinct of sympathy.’
local heavens is genuinely such an impressive debut & i look forward (am gnawing at the cages of my enclosure) to reading more of the author’s work!
thank you to netgalley for the arc!
‘“a breach?” muttered gatsby.
“yes, sir.”
“physical or cyber?”
the klipspringer paused. “both, sir.”
jordan and i feigned interest in the aquarium.’
April 5, 2025
Thank you, NetGalley for an arc! To start, as someone who has never read The Great Gatsby, (yes, I’m just as confused as you are, my English class's reading material was different), but has seen the movie a million times and considers it a comfort favorite; this was a DELICIOUS (queer) retelling of the classic story—though I probably missed a few references but I’ll read the original (one day).
Careful and awe-striking writing too, here’s a couple of my favorite quotes: “No, in fact, I've just left it all behind in search of a better beverage,” (I do just love Nick and Jordan’s relationship in this book), “Because, Because, Because—”.
All in all, as close as I was to giving this only 4.5 stars, I absolutely had to go five stars for this fantastic debut (first 5 star read of the year down 🙂↕️)! I will be running to get my physical copy when this is released! For some reason now, I want to rewatch La La Land just as much as I want to rewatch The Great Gatsby and that’s probably saying something.
“Aren’t we all just in love with the worst people?”I hate that I’m quoting Tom but in this circumstance, this quote comes off as a faraway observation of the unlikely foursome that is Jay Gatsby, Daisy Buchanan, Nick Carraway, and Jordan Baker. The tragedy of it all, the woes of falling in love under a ruse and setting plans but the heart gets in the way, the longing in hopes for a different outcome! And all of it against the most unlikely backdrop—a cyberpunk future, which was a bit hard to chew in the beginning but the world-building was so lush and the high-tech was so cool, namely the ocular mods and that food simulation place (cannot get that whole sequence out of my head). The cyberpunk world building cranked the politics and power of the upper and lower class on high and it was very interesting to see the many ways NYC took a toll on Nick.
Careful and awe-striking writing too, here’s a couple of my favorite quotes: “No, in fact, I've just left it all behind in search of a better beverage,” (I do just love Nick and Jordan’s relationship in this book), “Because, Because, Because—”.
All in all, as close as I was to giving this only 4.5 stars, I absolutely had to go five stars for this fantastic debut (first 5 star read of the year down 🙂↕️)! I will be running to get my physical copy when this is released! For some reason now, I want to rewatch La La Land just as much as I want to rewatch The Great Gatsby and that’s probably saying something.
April 4, 2025
This book was so beautifully well done. It’s a love letter to the past - it honors the original work with so much care and devotion. It’s a promise to the future - not only in the futuristic cyberpunk setting, but in a renewed interest in speculative sci-fi fiction that will undoubtedly blossom after it hits bookshelves. And it’s a gift to the present - because while it wrecks you, the reader, it does it in the best way possible. It’s gorgeous prose and enthralling 4th part will sit with me for days. I loved it, and I was not a huge fan of The Great Gatsby when I read it 25 years ago. This renewed my interest in the work; however, I’m also pretty sure that it won’t live up to the author’s incredible updates and twists. Loved it. Thank you to Bindery Books, Inky Phoenix Press, and NetGalley for this ARC in exchange for my honest review.
June 22, 2025
Thank you to NetGalley for providing me with an e-ARC!
Local Heavens is a queer cyberpunk retelling of The Great Gatsby where Nick Carraway, the main character, gets the assignment to move to New York and investigate Jay Gatsby.
Like The Great Gatsby, Local Heavens is a commentary of class but also delves into race, sexuality, and sexism. The prose is beautiful and reminiscent of Fitzgerald’s at times in a way that seems purposeful and not overdone, as the novel still has a distinct voice compared to anything I have read before.
Because I have a lot of thoughts, I will be breaking it down into pros and cons:
Pros:
The characters
I absolutely adored the characters! Well, mostly, not all (looking at you, Tom).
- Nick: Nick is a really interesting (the forbidden word for English majors ik) main character, and without spoiling anything, all I can say is that I loved his character arc and him grappling with how other people see him vs how he sees himself.
- Jordan: If there’s one thing about Jordan, it’s that she will always be a baddie in every iteration. The commentary on women in sports and women “aging out” of things were really well done, and I enjoyed that part of the novel a lot!
- Owl Eyes: An unexpected favorite! Sure, she sucks at her job, but she is speaking facts.
- Daisy: I have very mixed feelings about Daisy, but I love her complexities and seeing how she deals with motherhood and her (shitty) husband. I always love it when books deal with flawed characters.
- Gatsby: Another character who has a lot of flaws. He is positive to a fault, naïve, believes in miracles, and I love his conversations with Nick (his complete opposite in the way they view the world) about optimism and pragmatism.
The relationships
- Whether platonic or romantic, I think the relationships really just sold this book for me! They were all done really well, and it never felt like any of the platonic relationships were pushed aside for the romantic relationships, which I really enjoyed! It’s definitely a character driven story, and platonic relationships are, in my opinion, very important for those kinds of stories.
The prose
- I already mentioned the prose, but I just have to mention it again because it is stunning! I will absolutely be buying the physical copy when it is released and underlighting so many lines.
The social commentary
- This had a lot of layers of social commentary, as mentioned before. Because I have read The Great Gatsby, I was expecting the commentary on class, and Fajardo delivered! There were a lot of parallels to our world that probably veers into spoiler territory if I talk about them too much, but it all made so much sense in a cyberpunk setting!
- I love the way Fajardo tackled racism, both in 2075 when the novel takes place but also in the lives of Nick’s family members who lived years ago, showing how racism has somehow survived throughout all these years despite there being so many bigger issues to worry about (sounds familiar?).
- I also loved the discussions on what kinds of “fighting the system” actually work. It’s similar to a lot of conversations being had today too. Can you fight the system using the very system you’re trying to fight, or do you have to fight it from the outside?
Cons:
The retelling aspect
- I don’t mean that I dislike it being a retelling, not at all. I just think it, at times, leaned a little too much into the retelling aspect, and I know it is a retelling, but it doesn’t seem to leave much wiggle room (which probably sounds like a wild thing to say about a book that reimagines The Great Gatsby in a cyberpunk setting). What I mean is that there are events and conversations that happen at certain times in the original that also happen in some way in this book, and it sometimes felt like they’re here just because they were in the original.
Underdeveloped side plot
- There’s a side plot that is introduced early on in the book that’s kind of just… not talked about for like 100 pages and then suddenly it’s brought up again and said to be a huge part of everyone’s daily lives, and it’s said that everyone talks about it and it’s on the news all the time, except… we’ve only seen it on the news once and we’ve only heard people talking about it once. It wasn’t a huge plot point, but I’d still have loved to see it talked about more to see how people actually felt about it instead of just being told that people talked about it.
I will also say, there was a moment before the beginning of the second part where I got really confused about what was happening because I had no idea what year we were in (I don’t know if this was mentioned earlier in the book and I just forgot about it?), but then I read the blurb again and remembered it’s 2075 and then it made sense, so that might just be on me. But other than that, I really enjoyed the worldbuilding and didn’t find it confusing, so I didn’t want to put this as a con.
Overall, I could talk a lot more about the things I loved about the book than the things I liked less (and there wasn’t really anything I disliked), and I cannot wait to get my hands on a physical copy of this book when it’s released! It also feels like the kind of book that will be even better on a reread, so I’m looking forward to reading it again in October!
Local Heavens is a queer cyberpunk retelling of The Great Gatsby where Nick Carraway, the main character, gets the assignment to move to New York and investigate Jay Gatsby.
Like The Great Gatsby, Local Heavens is a commentary of class but also delves into race, sexuality, and sexism. The prose is beautiful and reminiscent of Fitzgerald’s at times in a way that seems purposeful and not overdone, as the novel still has a distinct voice compared to anything I have read before.
Because I have a lot of thoughts, I will be breaking it down into pros and cons:
Pros:
The characters
I absolutely adored the characters! Well, mostly, not all (looking at you, Tom).
- Nick: Nick is a really interesting (the forbidden word for English majors ik) main character, and without spoiling anything, all I can say is that I loved his character arc and him grappling with how other people see him vs how he sees himself.
- Jordan: If there’s one thing about Jordan, it’s that she will always be a baddie in every iteration. The commentary on women in sports and women “aging out” of things were really well done, and I enjoyed that part of the novel a lot!
- Owl Eyes: An unexpected favorite! Sure, she sucks at her job, but she is speaking facts.
- Daisy: I have very mixed feelings about Daisy, but I love her complexities and seeing how she deals with motherhood and her (shitty) husband. I always love it when books deal with flawed characters.
- Gatsby: Another character who has a lot of flaws. He is positive to a fault, naïve, believes in miracles, and I love his conversations with Nick (his complete opposite in the way they view the world) about optimism and pragmatism.
The relationships
- Whether platonic or romantic, I think the relationships really just sold this book for me! They were all done really well, and it never felt like any of the platonic relationships were pushed aside for the romantic relationships, which I really enjoyed! It’s definitely a character driven story, and platonic relationships are, in my opinion, very important for those kinds of stories.
The prose
- I already mentioned the prose, but I just have to mention it again because it is stunning! I will absolutely be buying the physical copy when it is released and underlighting so many lines.
The social commentary
- This had a lot of layers of social commentary, as mentioned before. Because I have read The Great Gatsby, I was expecting the commentary on class, and Fajardo delivered! There were a lot of parallels to our world that probably veers into spoiler territory if I talk about them too much, but it all made so much sense in a cyberpunk setting!
- I love the way Fajardo tackled racism, both in 2075 when the novel takes place but also in the lives of Nick’s family members who lived years ago, showing how racism has somehow survived throughout all these years despite there being so many bigger issues to worry about (sounds familiar?).
- I also loved the discussions on what kinds of “fighting the system” actually work. It’s similar to a lot of conversations being had today too. Can you fight the system using the very system you’re trying to fight, or do you have to fight it from the outside?
Cons:
The retelling aspect
- I don’t mean that I dislike it being a retelling, not at all. I just think it, at times, leaned a little too much into the retelling aspect, and I know it is a retelling, but it doesn’t seem to leave much wiggle room (which probably sounds like a wild thing to say about a book that reimagines The Great Gatsby in a cyberpunk setting). What I mean is that there are events and conversations that happen at certain times in the original that also happen in some way in this book, and it sometimes felt like they’re here just because they were in the original.
Underdeveloped side plot
- There’s a side plot that is introduced early on in the book that’s kind of just… not talked about for like 100 pages and then suddenly it’s brought up again and said to be a huge part of everyone’s daily lives, and it’s said that everyone talks about it and it’s on the news all the time, except… we’ve only seen it on the news once and we’ve only heard people talking about it once. It wasn’t a huge plot point, but I’d still have loved to see it talked about more to see how people actually felt about it instead of just being told that people talked about it.
I will also say, there was a moment before the beginning of the second part where I got really confused about what was happening because I had no idea what year we were in (I don’t know if this was mentioned earlier in the book and I just forgot about it?), but then I read the blurb again and remembered it’s 2075 and then it made sense, so that might just be on me. But other than that, I really enjoyed the worldbuilding and didn’t find it confusing, so I didn’t want to put this as a con.
Overall, I could talk a lot more about the things I loved about the book than the things I liked less (and there wasn’t really anything I disliked), and I cannot wait to get my hands on a physical copy of this book when it’s released! It also feels like the kind of book that will be even better on a reread, so I’m looking forward to reading it again in October!
May 7, 2025
thank you netgalley for the arc, i’ll write a proper review once i gather my thoughts
August 27, 2025
*thank you to netgalley and inky phoenix press for this arc in exchange for an honest review*
so… confession: i’ve never read The Great Gatsby. i tried the first chapter once, but bounced off. that said, i picked up Local Heavens because the premise sounded cool — cyberpunk nyc, class divide, secret hacking, future tech billionaires. it even reminded me a little of The Thousandth Floor (yes, that young adult guilty pleasure), which made me excited at first.
but honestly? i struggled. the writing isn’t bad at all — i could tell it was well done, carefully crafted even — but i never felt immersed or hooked. the rich and glamorous world felt too distant from me, and the cyberpunk details weren’t fleshed out enough to pull me into the story. so i ended up in this weird middle space where nothing grounded me, not the setting, not the characters.
i did peek at some other reviews and noticed the retelling debate, but since i haven’t read Gatsby, i can’t weigh in on that. what i can say is that the hype around this one might be more exciting than the actual reading experience, at least for me. maybe if you already love Gatsby you’ll get more out of it, or maybe you’ll just be distracted by the constant parallels.
DNF @p. 134. for me, it just wasn’t engaging enough to keep going. maybe someday i’ll return and have a different opinion.
so… confession: i’ve never read The Great Gatsby. i tried the first chapter once, but bounced off. that said, i picked up Local Heavens because the premise sounded cool — cyberpunk nyc, class divide, secret hacking, future tech billionaires. it even reminded me a little of The Thousandth Floor (yes, that young adult guilty pleasure), which made me excited at first.
but honestly? i struggled. the writing isn’t bad at all — i could tell it was well done, carefully crafted even — but i never felt immersed or hooked. the rich and glamorous world felt too distant from me, and the cyberpunk details weren’t fleshed out enough to pull me into the story. so i ended up in this weird middle space where nothing grounded me, not the setting, not the characters.
i did peek at some other reviews and noticed the retelling debate, but since i haven’t read Gatsby, i can’t weigh in on that. what i can say is that the hype around this one might be more exciting than the actual reading experience, at least for me. maybe if you already love Gatsby you’ll get more out of it, or maybe you’ll just be distracted by the constant parallels.
DNF @p. 134. for me, it just wasn’t engaging enough to keep going. maybe someday i’ll return and have a different opinion.
September 8, 2025
4.5 ⭐️ rounded up!
As someone who studied and loved the source material, I am so thankful for this brilliant and beautiful dystopian cyberpunk sci-fi retelling of The Great Gatsby. Nick Carraway has my heart forever and I am with him all the way when it comes to all the complex feelings towards a corrupt billionaire with a heart of gold.
I think we all fear our rapid spiralling towards end stage capitalism and this book encapsulates that while also giving that hope for revolution. Full of vivid imagery, stunning prose, and an expansion on Fitzgerald’s homoerotic subtext that we’ve all longed for (let’s be real), this was one of my favourite reads of the year so far.
Many thanks for NetGalley and Bindery Books for the ARC!
As someone who studied and loved the source material, I am so thankful for this brilliant and beautiful dystopian cyberpunk sci-fi retelling of The Great Gatsby. Nick Carraway has my heart forever and I am with him all the way when it comes to all the complex feelings towards a corrupt billionaire with a heart of gold.
I think we all fear our rapid spiralling towards end stage capitalism and this book encapsulates that while also giving that hope for revolution. Full of vivid imagery, stunning prose, and an expansion on Fitzgerald’s homoerotic subtext that we’ve all longed for (let’s be real), this was one of my favourite reads of the year so far.
Many thanks for NetGalley and Bindery Books for the ARC!
August 15, 2025
The Great Gatsby is one of my favorite classics. It’s a story I find to be relevant to us even now, 100 or so years later. So the fact that K.M. Fajardo has managed to take that story and make it even more relevant to the times is impressive and comforting and frightening all at once. Local Heavens. What a piece on what’s become of our society as of today. How pertinent, how moving, how fucking tragic.
Fajardo manages to keep the magic of what makes Gatsby so great. These characters feel like they belong in this story amidst a beautifully built fantasy system and prose that is to die for. She gives us what most of us want from the original novel. True understanding, slow and earned. It’s sexy, it’s erotic, it’s another version of Nick and Gatsby and Daisy and Jordan rocketing through a new age trying their best to find their footing. Trying to hold on to each other as the world around them shakes and bucks. We know how this story goes. We know how it ends, and yet Fajardo manages to coax us into the world again with no false promises. No promises of life or death, love or hatred, just beautiful literature. A chance to see ourselves and our world and a way through it all.
For all the devastation, Fajardo manages to be so realistic yet so hopeful on such a poignant and heart-wrenching topic, it should inspire hope in her readers. The world around us is changing, but that doesn’t mean we can’t change it for the better. We can make it through these dark times if we stick together, if we keep our sense of community alive, ready to be leaned on when necessary, ready to lend a hand. We must fight for what we’ve always believed in. For a future that includes all of us, one that doesn’t threaten to leave us behind.
Thank you to Netgalley for access to this title. And please, check out Local Heavens on October 14, 2025.
Fajardo manages to keep the magic of what makes Gatsby so great. These characters feel like they belong in this story amidst a beautifully built fantasy system and prose that is to die for. She gives us what most of us want from the original novel. True understanding, slow and earned. It’s sexy, it’s erotic, it’s another version of Nick and Gatsby and Daisy and Jordan rocketing through a new age trying their best to find their footing. Trying to hold on to each other as the world around them shakes and bucks. We know how this story goes. We know how it ends, and yet Fajardo manages to coax us into the world again with no false promises. No promises of life or death, love or hatred, just beautiful literature. A chance to see ourselves and our world and a way through it all.
For all the devastation, Fajardo manages to be so realistic yet so hopeful on such a poignant and heart-wrenching topic, it should inspire hope in her readers. The world around us is changing, but that doesn’t mean we can’t change it for the better. We can make it through these dark times if we stick together, if we keep our sense of community alive, ready to be leaned on when necessary, ready to lend a hand. We must fight for what we’ve always believed in. For a future that includes all of us, one that doesn’t threaten to leave us behind.
Thank you to Netgalley for access to this title. And please, check out Local Heavens on October 14, 2025.
March 29, 2025
What a book. What a glorious book. It really says a lot that a book that's a retelling of a story so familiar—and to me, beloved—could keep me up until three in the morning because I couldn't put it down for the last 30%.
Local Heavens is a cyberpunk retelling of The Great Gatsby, focusing on a Nick Carraway sent from Manila to New York City on behalf of his cousin, aiming to look into a mysterious cybertech CEO whose company is looking to pair with her family's—one Jay Gatsby.
Reader, I loved this book. I was set up for success with it—any queer retelling of Gatsby is always going to be a want-to-read for me, and this one was no different. The author, K.M. Fajardo, popped up on my TikTok feed with a video that had maybe 20 likes at the time pitching this book, and I instantly pursued the author on all social media to make sure I didn't miss a detail, including when it would be available here on NetGalley.
But my excitement for this book also set my expectations high—and Local Heavens surpassed them. For me, one of the grandest, and often overlooked themes of The Great Gatsby is the American Dream, and how the idea of it damaged so many along the way either in pursuit of it or loss of it. The cyberpunk aspect of this story and the destruction of our world in pursuit of wealth, creating a cavernous division between the have and have not, was so soulfully true to the original text. The author also did an incredible job matching the beats of Gatsby at their core while never feeling entirely beholden to the story.
As a lover of Nick Carraway, the way he was treated as a character—with such thoughtfulness and care, when often he's relegated to a piece of clay to serve whatever storytelling purpose—was thrilling, as was the depiction of all of the characters and their future interpretations. Jordan Baker was a highlight for me, and the way her and Nick's relationship in its various forms gave the book such a spirit. The subtle differences between them and the way they went about life represented both the reasons they cared for each other and the reasons they were, in the long run, incompatible.
Speaking of compatibility, the way the relationship between Nick and Gatsby was represented was... Perfect. I could use more eloquent words, but perfect is the right one. The way they foiled each other and made mistakes all on a journey of slow falling for one another, to the point where you hardly know where any of it began, was artful. Gatsby himself is a difficult man to write, and Fajardo does it with all of the passion of a fan of the original work and all of the creativity that the mastermind behind this novel requires.
The cyberpunk elements to the story were also presented in a way that was digestible, so I never had to spend a large amount of time trying to figure out what was going on with all of the tech—it came easy, with the world vivid in Farjardo's prose, allowing me to simply relish in the creative story and rich characters laid out in front of me.
I cannot wait to get my hands on a physical copy of this to annotate the life out of—thank you for the eARC of this beautiful book in exchange for my honest review.
PS: Extremely niche comparison but last summer I saw a musical version of The Great Gatsby at the ART in Boston, with music by Florence Welch, and haven't stopped thinking about it and its music since—this book is truly that adaptation's spiritual cousin. This comparison is for the niche crossover of people who will have watched and will read both.
Local Heavens is a cyberpunk retelling of The Great Gatsby, focusing on a Nick Carraway sent from Manila to New York City on behalf of his cousin, aiming to look into a mysterious cybertech CEO whose company is looking to pair with her family's—one Jay Gatsby.
Reader, I loved this book. I was set up for success with it—any queer retelling of Gatsby is always going to be a want-to-read for me, and this one was no different. The author, K.M. Fajardo, popped up on my TikTok feed with a video that had maybe 20 likes at the time pitching this book, and I instantly pursued the author on all social media to make sure I didn't miss a detail, including when it would be available here on NetGalley.
But my excitement for this book also set my expectations high—and Local Heavens surpassed them. For me, one of the grandest, and often overlooked themes of The Great Gatsby is the American Dream, and how the idea of it damaged so many along the way either in pursuit of it or loss of it. The cyberpunk aspect of this story and the destruction of our world in pursuit of wealth, creating a cavernous division between the have and have not, was so soulfully true to the original text. The author also did an incredible job matching the beats of Gatsby at their core while never feeling entirely beholden to the story.
As a lover of Nick Carraway, the way he was treated as a character—with such thoughtfulness and care, when often he's relegated to a piece of clay to serve whatever storytelling purpose—was thrilling, as was the depiction of all of the characters and their future interpretations. Jordan Baker was a highlight for me, and the way her and Nick's relationship in its various forms gave the book such a spirit. The subtle differences between them and the way they went about life represented both the reasons they cared for each other and the reasons they were, in the long run, incompatible.
Speaking of compatibility, the way the relationship between Nick and Gatsby was represented was... Perfect. I could use more eloquent words, but perfect is the right one. The way they foiled each other and made mistakes all on a journey of slow falling for one another, to the point where you hardly know where any of it began, was artful. Gatsby himself is a difficult man to write, and Fajardo does it with all of the passion of a fan of the original work and all of the creativity that the mastermind behind this novel requires.
The cyberpunk elements to the story were also presented in a way that was digestible, so I never had to spend a large amount of time trying to figure out what was going on with all of the tech—it came easy, with the world vivid in Farjardo's prose, allowing me to simply relish in the creative story and rich characters laid out in front of me.
I cannot wait to get my hands on a physical copy of this to annotate the life out of—thank you for the eARC of this beautiful book in exchange for my honest review.
PS: Extremely niche comparison but last summer I saw a musical version of The Great Gatsby at the ART in Boston, with music by Florence Welch, and haven't stopped thinking about it and its music since—this book is truly that adaptation's spiritual cousin. This comparison is for the niche crossover of people who will have watched and will read both.
August 1, 2025
Local heavens
Full disclosure: I know The Great Gatsby inside out and back to front. When I was sent this proof by the lovely Tamara at Zaffre, I was absolutely over the moon.
The writing was brilliant - it incorporated just enough references to the original (including actual dialogue) without feeling too repetitive. The characters mirrored the originals very well, and the futuristic updates felt spot-on - I absolutely think that Tom Buchanan would go for low-key yet expensive work to remain looking 30, while Jordan Baker would splash out on anything that gives her an edge!
I thought this was a fascinating take on a beloved book. It changed enough that it didn’t feel like a rehash, but kept enough elements that the inspiration was recognisable. I have never read a cyberpunk book before, but I thoroughly enjoyed this. The bar was high for me on this one, but I’m pleased to say that Local Heavens delivered.
I’ve read multiple books inspired by The Great Gatsby, but this is by far the best. I would absolutely recommend this to fans of the original - it’s beautifully written, the characters are absorbing and compelling, and the world building truly blew me away.
Thank you to Zaffre and NetGalley for an eARC.
Full disclosure: I know The Great Gatsby inside out and back to front. When I was sent this proof by the lovely Tamara at Zaffre, I was absolutely over the moon.
The writing was brilliant - it incorporated just enough references to the original (including actual dialogue) without feeling too repetitive. The characters mirrored the originals very well, and the futuristic updates felt spot-on - I absolutely think that Tom Buchanan would go for low-key yet expensive work to remain looking 30, while Jordan Baker would splash out on anything that gives her an edge!
I thought this was a fascinating take on a beloved book. It changed enough that it didn’t feel like a rehash, but kept enough elements that the inspiration was recognisable. I have never read a cyberpunk book before, but I thoroughly enjoyed this. The bar was high for me on this one, but I’m pleased to say that Local Heavens delivered.
I’ve read multiple books inspired by The Great Gatsby, but this is by far the best. I would absolutely recommend this to fans of the original - it’s beautifully written, the characters are absorbing and compelling, and the world building truly blew me away.
Thank you to Zaffre and NetGalley for an eARC.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 104 reviews