Beneath the Rising

I had to think a lot about how I felt about this book (and I'm still thinking). For some time while I was reading I was wondering why it wasn't listed as YA, since the main characters were a genius teen and her non-genius sidekick. There was the unrequited crush thing going on, and the teen fantasy of luxurious robot-tended life without parents, and the being chased by bad guys but outsmarting them thing. BUT as the story unfolded, there was so much more going on, about xenophobia and privilege and self-induced pressure to succeed. I've just seen it show up on Tor.com's Best of the Year So Far lists, and yeah, no argument there.