The core problem of this work is that of the source material. The narrator is constantly winking at the audience, reminding them that this is a novel, and lampshading the genre cliches. While this might be amusing if being played for laughs, here the winking is played straight, with an entire long scene in the fourth chapter or so simply being a recap of what happened in the prior chapters, except told as text messages between the narrator and a friend with color commentary. It’s entirely wasted time and doesn’t serve anything except to wink at the audience and act as negative commentary on the reader.

This constant winking at the audience also completely undercuts the entire purpose of having a cast, rather than a single reader, as the constant reminders that “this is a novel” undercuts the advantages to suspension of disbelief that having a cast to voice the other characters brings, so instead of being able to enjoy having clearly different voices for different characters, we’re constantly pulled out and reminded that this is a story.

There were also periodic issues with the audio getting tinny that was mildly distracting that in a better story would have been a minor issue at most, but here further added to the constant being pulled out of the story,

Finally, the main character here was simply… unsympathetic and his constant narrative foreshadowing by talking about the “him later” and how ridiculous he was at the time of the start of the story, likely meant to be affably self depreciating, came off more as ham fisted and annoying.

Overall, I would not suggest this title to anyone who likes to get lost in a story. Those folks who like meta fiction might get something from it though.