I’ve Read 52 Books in 2025—But This Gatsby Twist Stands Out

Though I’m on track to read 60+ books this year, my tastes lean more classic lit (I’m reading Pride & Prejudice for the 22nd time) than contemporary. But I am sucker for a contemporary re-telling of a well-loved story. So when the algorithm served me a post by a debut author peddling a cyberpunk, queer take on The Great Gatsby, I recommended it to my book club ASAP. After all, 2025 is the 100th anniversary of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s famously tragic novel. I’d raise a flute of Champagne to that.

The year is 2075. Setting: New York City in the futuristic New Americas. The landscape is blighted by climate change. AI bots and technological body modifications are rampant. At the center of it all is Nick Carraway, a Filipino-American corporate hacker sent on assignment from Manila to investigate the mysterious billionaire Jay Gatsby.

If you’ve read the original work, you’ll know the outlines of this story. All the principal characters are there, including Daisy, Tom, Jordan and Myrtle. The hedonistic feel of the 1920s is perfectly captured in Gatsby’s raucous parties and the opulent Buchanan estate—essentially, those facets remain the same, with a lot more tech involved. One of the most unique facets was how humans accessed cyberspace—via body modifications in the spine, as if one were a USB port.

Fitzgerald’s original book is short—less than 200 pages, almost a novella. On the other end, Local Heavens is 490. I was skeptical at first, but author K.M. Fajardo did make good use of those pages. Intense cyberpunk world building aside, the length of the novel allowed me to sit with the characters. One of the members of my book club remarked that the original prose was more of a broad commentary on morals during the Jazz Age, and thus the characters were more metaphors than people. Local Heavens presents deeply fleshed out characters with longings and conflict, providing more of a why behind their actions. Admittedly, I do think the ending wrapped up too quickly. To complete Nick’s character arc, I wish the author had done some more “showing” instead of summarizing what happened, as it made the evolution difficult to understand.

The thing that really stood out to my book club was the way Fajardo used the characters to address themes of immigration, East vs. West and class divide. In this retelling, Nick is Asian-American, and Carraway is the name his family adopts to assimilate to their life in the West. A book club friend praised Fajardo’s approach for not taking the usual “I have two identities” route and exploring it with more depth—and I concur. Nick pokes into the complexities of calling two places home, even when neither will ever fully claim him. As a reader, I could relate, and that was painful, but refreshing.

Overall, Local Heavens speaks with a satirical eye on the current state of the world and this era of late stage capitalism with humor and feeling. Now, if we could just get a screen adaptation, I’ll pop the popcorn.