DNF at 17%
This is not a standalone. At all. There are three (3!) novellas floating around, two of which seem to be critical to reading this.
First: the listed series prequel, Discord. I always miss these existing, but if its a standalone like the blurb says, that shouldn’t matter. It does.
Second: Cold Light - part of the Criminal Delights series. Not connected on Goodreads. A friend read (tried to read) it and gave me the heads up, otherwise I never would have found it.
Third: Make Snow Mistake - this one I’m not sure is required to read before Disrupt, but it seems like you need to read this universe to understand it.
In summary: the connections are a mess, and this is not a standalone.
But wait, I have more. Specifics, I mean.
The 30 side characters:
As soon as like 20 side characters were introduced, as couples, with dramatic backstories, I got suspicious. These characters have clear Other Book energy. There’s so many people I don’t know, and introducing them by their previous-book backstories is meaningless as a first time reader, and the sheer number of them means I forget them immediately.
The missing backstory for these characters
Adding insult to injury, it turns out the inciting, important Plot Event - MC1 being kidnapped and tortured I think - happens in another book. The most we get is a little snippet in the beginning, where MC2 sees MC1s injuries (unexplained to reader) and is like “I’m gonna kill the man who did this to you” blah blah whatever I don’t know you people so this is just weird, you don’t know each other so this is weird (or do they? did they meet before, maybe in a previous book and not shown here, in this standalone novel?)
Overall, the writing style was sort of meh to me, and nothing terrible or offensive had happened as of when I quit the book. If it had truly been a standalone, I would have kept reading, but I’m not about to track down three books so I can then return to the book I already started.