Coté conveys one adventure after another.

... Coté chronicles a year of hard work, adventure and just plain fun.

... charming.

... delightful.

it’s scenes...in which Coté freely expresses his superiority to so many of the other 'beeks' he encounters both in NYC and around the world, that render him a less-than-charming companion. One or two such anecdotes might be funny; 12 months’ worth grow old. So, too, do the author’s frequent references to his appearances in the media. The freely dropped celebrity names also grate (10 within three paragraphs in the prologue alone); irritatingly, he refers to both Martha Stewart and Yoko Ono, whom he 'bump[s]' into when keeping bees at MoMA, by their given names, a familiarity he does not assume with male celebrities such as Paul Newman or Bill Clinton (Spike Lee is an exception). Coté has both a rambling, conversational style that can leave readers unmoored in his timeline and the bad habit of introducing beekeeping practices unlikely to be understood by general readers pages before he describes their purpose, often only elliptically. His obvious, oft-stated love for his father—his beekeeping mentor—and regard for those beekeepers he deems competent are warming, but it's not enough to remove the sour air of self-regard.