My commute has drastically lengthened these past few weeks, so I have gone back and relistened to a few podcasts that I remember enjoying. One of them was Limetown, where I remember that I really liked Season 1 and was meh on Season 2. Well… the relisten proved that I really liked Season 1, but found Season 2’s ending a bit too confusing and unconvincing. Still, I enjoyed it enough that I decided to read the Limetown book, which is the prequel to the podcast.

Limetown: The Prequel follows both Lia and Emile a few years before the events of Season 1. We get to find out why Lia decided to even look into Limetown, and we get to see how Emile got to Limetown in the first place. The story alternates between Lia and Emile and we get to see both new and familiar faces in the book.

The good: I enjoyed the story! It was very interesting and I liked the back and forth between Lia and Emile – both of them are interesting characters (though Lia’s “I’ve learnt all I need to know about interviewing” techniques were… kind of unconvincing at the start), though I found Emile to be slightly more interesting because he has to deal with all sorts of emotions.

The bad: This kind of topples Season 1. At the risk of mild spoilers, Season 1 has us finding out with Lia just what Limetown is all about. But with this book, it feels like Lia should have known a lot more than what she was reporting – was it all a front? Or, as I suspect, did writing this book and Season 2 help the writers to develop the history of Limetown? After reading this, I felt like Season 1 of Limetown was deeply off; how could Lia have reported the way she did while knowing what she did? While I liked the book, it had so much action regarding Limetown that I was left with more questions than answers about Season 1.

And yet, I’m not sure if you can read this book without having listened to the podcast. Who is Lia? Why do we care about Emile? I think if you don’t really know what happened in Limetown, you may be wondering where this book is leading.

As you can see, I’m conflicted about this book. It was a fun read and it did flesh out the world of Limetown, but it doesn’t mesh well with Season 1 of the podcast. It does fit in better with Season 2 of the podcast, where we find out more about what happened after Limetown that drives Emile as a character (I hope this is not a spoiler), but the inconsistencies between the book and season 1 bug me.

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