The Stars Too Fondly is a fun, quick read that will be good to take pool-side when it is released in June.
3.0 / 5 Stars
So, here’s the thing: Cleo and her friends really, truly didn’t mean to steal this spaceship.
They just wanted to know why, twenty years ago, the entire Providence crew vanished without a trace. But then the stupid dark matter engine started all on its own, and now these four twenty-somethings are en route to Proxima Centauri, unable to turn around, and being harangued by a snarky hologram that has the face and attitude of the ship’s missing captain, Billie.
Cleo has dreamt of being an astronaut all her life, and Earth is kind of a lost cause at this point, so this should be one of those blessings in disguise that people talk about. But as the ship gets deeper into space, the laws of physics start twisting, old mysteries come crawling back to life, and Cleo’s initially combative relationship with Billie turns into something deeper and more desperate than either woman was prepared for.
Lying somewhere in the subspace between science fantasy and sapphic rom-com, The Stars Too Fondly is a soaring near-future adventure about dark matter and alternate dimensions, leaving home and finding family, and the galaxy-saving power of letting yourself love and be loved.
However, I do think it leans more toward the YA category. I would have tempered my expectations if I had known that going in.
A Quick Summary
The story starts off following a group of 4 grad students who have been friends forever breaking into an abandoned spaceship launch facility. It is pretty clear that the setting is a near-future Earth where the climate is a problem, but apparently not a desperate enough problem that the failure of a space-faring relocation mission that was supposed to be the hope for humanity changed anyone’s behavior. You certainly do not get post-apocalyptic vibes from this story. The friends accidentally trigger the launch of the abandoned space ship and are launched on a (conveniently quick) journey to the nearest star system. Luckily, they have the ship’s computer hologram to help them, and she happens to be the captain of the failed mission from 20 years ago. They all have to figure out the mystery of why that mission failed and why the ship launched now and how to get back to earth. Oh, and they all have super powers now too – weird. So they should figure that out as well. Whew – that’s a lot going on, but there’s still time for a romance to bloom between Cleo – the plucky main character of the friend group – and Billie the holographic captain.
Should this be ya?
I requested the ARC of this book because the premise sounded fun, the title was beautiful, and it was written by a debut author. I love giving new authors a try – you never know what you’re in for and you may just stumble across someone who will become an auto-read author for you in the future. Unfortunately, I felt that this story might be mis-marketed as adult sci-fi. It definitely felt more like a YA novel to me. The age of the characters may put this out of the YA market, but the characters could have just as easily been late teens/early twenties and filled all of the same roles. I’ve certainly read YA novels where the characters filled the same roles as these characters. And I’ve also read more romantically spicy YA novels. I just want your expectations to be in-line when picking up this story.
What didn’t work
The story moves along at a very fast pace. It is hard to connect with any of the characters because of the break-neck pacing and the number of characters. You get to know all of them on a superficial level. For me, that made all of the characters feel immature and fairly one-dimensional. Each character was there to play a very specific role, and they didn’t really deviate from that role. When the emotional or romantic scenes played out, they felt flat because I felt like I was being told about the emotions or romance and not really seeing or experiencing it.
Some of the Good Bits
The moments that I enjoyed the most and where I thought this story was really successful were in the logs/journal entries and the back-and-forth communicator messages. These scenes made the story feel like sci-fi and we as readers were presented with a limited view on how a character behaves and feels. It helped flesh out the characters’ personalities, but I think there could have been even more of these moments.
The tone of the story overall is optimistic. I liked that it focused on found-family and friendship bonds that bend but never break. If you like sci-fi with happy endings, this will be one to try out. With it being so fast paced and light, this would be great to read pool-side in an afternoon.
Recommendation
Did I feel like I wasted my time reading this book? No. While I didn’t really connect with the characters and there were a lot of conveniences to the sake of the plot, this was still an easy, consumable (if not memorable) read. I can see this becoming a Netflix movie, but not a block-buster sci-fi spectacle. In that, I think it lives up to the rom-com description. This reminds me of those teen rom-com movies from the early 2000’s that I enjoyed so much back then, but with refreshingly more diversity. If you are looking for a light, fun sci-fi read this summer, then maybe give this one a try to support a debut author.
Thank you to NetGalley and publisher Harper Voyager for providing a digital review copy of The Stars Too Fondly in exchange for my honest review.
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