Review: The Stars We Steal (Alexa Donne)

Title: The Stars We Steal
Series: standalone
Author: Alexa Donne
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Release Date: February 4, 2020
Genre: Young Adult Science Fiction Romance
Told: First Person (Leo), Past Tense
Content Rating: Older Teen (a few words of language, kissing and sensuality, attempted murder)
Format Read: ARC
Find On: Goodreads
Purchase: Azon | B&N | BookDepo | Indiebound
Summary:

Engagement season is in the air. Eighteen-year-old Princess Leonie “Leo” Kolburg, heir to a faded European spaceship, only has one thing on her mind: which lucky bachelor can save her family from financial ruin? 

But when Leo’s childhood friend and first love Elliot returns as the captain of a successful whiskey ship, everything changes. Elliot was the one that got away, the boy Leo’s family deemed to be unsuitable for marriage. Now, he’s the biggest catch of the season and he seems determined to make Leo’s life miserable. But old habits die hard, and as Leo navigates the glittering balls of the Valg Season, she finds herself failing for her first love in a game of love, lies, and past regrets.

*          *          *

I initially grabbed The Stars We Steal solely because it was set in space, my biggest weakness. When I later discovered it was touted as "The Bachelorette goes to space," as well as a retelling of Jane Austen's Persuasion, I was equal parts wary (Bachelorette) and intrigued (Austen retelling). Bachelorette is not my kind of thing and I know little of it other than commercial snippets so I won't speak to its similarities, although I feel confident that Stars' heavy romantic drama would definitely interest a fan. But while I haven't yet read Persuasion, I have seen a movie or two and right from the start recognized the story of the poor rich girl struggling to keep her spendthrift family afloat and the poor jilted boy who returns rich and falls back in love.

With its love/hate/love romance and onset-predictable twists the story was somewhat of a cringer for me, but the writing was strong and the dark intrigue engaging. The plot was heavily focused on drama and romance with very little action which is usually a strike against for me, but the story actually worked well without it and held my interest. Confined to little more than a few luxury ships the space setting could've just as easily taken place on a planet so I wasn't overly impressed, but I appreciated the familiar story's change of scenery and time. While I wasn't that crazy about Elliot (although he did wear glasses, props for that), Leo was strong and smart and worth rooting for, and she had a fun and diverse group of friends and family that brightened the otherwise shadowed story. The climax got rather intense after the otherwise low-key tale but the end was sweet and romantic, and although the book stands very well alone I wouldn't be averse to a sequel exploring more of the struggling ships and sparking rebellion.

Conclusion: Was I glad I gave it a read? With its strong writing and engaging intrigue, yes. Would I recommend it? If you love intense drama and romance-focused stories, definitely. And, of course, if you love Persuasion, Jane Austen retellings in general, and/or The Bachelorette.


STRENGTHS:

✔  Ace rep!! Ace me highly approved. (What happened to him romantically, not so much.)

✔  Glasses rep

✔  Strong writing

✔  Engaging intrigue


WEAKNESSES:

✘  Predictable twists

✘  Very little action (but it really wasn't an action kind of story so that's my personal problem)

✘  Space setting was a little weak

✘  Love to hate to love romance (again, personal dislike)


For Fans Of: The Bachelorette, Jane Austen (especially Persuasion)

Scribble Rating: 

3.5 of 5 Scribbles

DNF Review: Unhinged (A.G. Howard)

Title: Unhinged
Series: Splintered, Book 2
Author: A.G. Howard
Publisher: Amulet Books
Release Date: January 7, 2014
Genre: Young Adult Dark Retelling
Told: First Person (Alyssa), Present Tense
Content Rating: up to Chapter 6 (sensuality, disturbing situations)
Format Read: ARC (trade)
Find On: Goodreads
Purchase On: Amazon | B&N | Book Depository
Summary:

Alyssa Gardner has been down the rabbit hole and faced the bandersnatch. She saved the life of Jeb, the guy she loves, and escaped the machinations of the disturbingly seductive Morpheus and the vindictive Queen Red. Now all she has to do is graduate high school and make it through prom so she can attend the prestigious art school in London she's always dreamed of.

That would be easier without her mother, freshly released from an asylum, acting overly protective and suspicious. And it would be much simpler if the mysterious Morpheus didn’t show up for school one day to tempt her with another dangerous quest in the dark, challenging Wonderland—where she (partly) belongs.

As prom and graduation creep closer, Alyssa juggles Morpheus’s unsettling presence in her real world with trying to tell Jeb the truth about a past he’s forgotten. Glimpses of Wonderland start to bleed through her art and into her world in very disturbing ways, and Morpheus warns that Queen Red won’t be far behind.

If Alyssa stays in the human realm, she could endanger Jeb, her parents, and everyone she loves. But if she steps through the rabbit hole again, she'll face a deadly battle that could cost more than just her head. 

*          *          *

I did not finish this book. I stopped at Chapter 6.

Series: This is the second book in the three-book Splintered series. You can read my 2013 review of Book 1, Splintered, here, and my 2019 re-read notes here.

While I somewhat enjoyed Splintered, there was always something about it that rubbed me the wrong way, although I could never put my finger on it. Still, I decided to try and binge the entire trilogy. 

As I began Unhinged, I quickly realized that my earlier problem was probably a lack of happy mediums. The overall story is one of madness and normalcy, but while the madness is expectedly disturbing, the normalcy is almost just as unsettling with dark art and fashion, unsavory hangout spots, and unstable families - not a happy medium to offer a madness respite. Then there's Alyssa: she is so strong and yet also so weepy and weak - I recall her screaming and generally flailing a lot in Splintered but it didn't fit her actions or personality. And then there are the boys, aka love interests: on the "normal" side we have a suffocatingly protective human who would rather Alyssa be a damsel in distress who can't do a thing for herself, and on the "mad" side we have a man who would actually kill her to force her to do everything herself. I have never liked either, and Unhinged escalated my dislike of both boys by leaps and bounds in only the first 6 chapters.

Conclusion: Although I am an Alice's Adventures fan and will always try a retelling, with its constant madness, contrasting MC, and no boy worth shipping I just can't bring myself to waste any more time on this series.

Review: Tell the Wind & Fire (Sarah Rees Brennan)

Title: Tell the Wind & Fire
Series: standalone
Author: Sarah Rees Brennan (site)
Publisher: Clarion Books
Release Date: April 5, 2016
Genre: Young Adult Alternate Magical Realism Retelling
Told: First Person (Lucie), Past Tense
Content Rating: Teen (violence, sensuality, some minor innuendo)
Format Read: ARC (publisher)
Find On: Goodreads
Purchase On: Amazon | B&N | Book Depository
Summary:

In a city divided between opulent luxury in the Light and fierce privations in the Dark, a determined young woman survives by guarding her secrets.

Lucie Manette was born in the Dark half of the city, but careful manipulations won her a home in the Light, celebrity status, and a rich, loving boyfriend. Now she just wants to keep her head down, but her boyfriend has a dark secret of his own—one involving an apparent stranger who is destitute and despised. Lucie alone knows the young men’s deadly connection, and even as the knowledge leads her to make a grave mistake, she can trust no one with the truth.

Blood and secrets alike spill out when revolution erupts. With both halves of the city burning, and mercy nowhere to be found, can Lucie save either boy—or herself?

*          *          *

Review copy provided by publisher for an honest review. Thank you, HMH!

In a Sentence: A tale of love, magic and revolution that began awkward but finished strong and tear-soaked.

Confession: I have never read A Tale of Two Cities. I don't believe I've even seen a movie adaptation, although I do think a half-hour Wishbone episode covered it a few decades ago. So when I was informed hours before starting Tell the Wind and Fire that it was a retelling of the classic, I was conflicted. I was a little discouraged since I'm not one for classics outside of Jane Austen, but also a little excited to offer a non-biased review among those who would compare it. So it was with both interest and trepidation that I began.

Story: After very publicly rescuing her father from torture in the Dark and securing them a life in the Light, Lucie wants nothing more than to live peacefully and enjoy her loving boyfriend, Ethan. But when Ethan is accused of treason and his illegal doppelganger suddenly appears and rescues him, her quiet life is thrust back into the limelight as one mistake after another stirs up secrets and lies and a revolution that throws her contented world into chaos. With all she knows and cares about threatened, Lucie must decide if she will continue to hide in the Light to save herself, or journey back into the Dark to save those she loves.

The story started really awkward for me, opening in the middle of sweet happiness quickly followed by sudden despair with next to no explanation about the world or the characters. I stumbled through the first two chapters lost and confused, only to get mired in a life and world history infodump in Chapter 3 that laid things out yet at the same time caused only more confusion. But despite my confusion and more telling than showing I pressed on, intrigued to see where the story was going, and was eventually rewarded as the book gradually grew on me at a point where I've heard other readers chose to drop out. Although the story was first and foremost a love story and decidedly more about character development than the magic and revolution as I would've liked, I did ultimately quite enjoy the read, and the end was strong and powerful and I cried through the last few chapters.

Magic: Essentially drawn to this book for the magic, I was rather disappointed when it turned out to be more prop than setting, a reason for the discrimination that brought about the revolution. What there was of the magic was moderately unique with unusual and dark twists, but while it felt simple enough to understand, the how and why of it - especially the rules and restrictions - were rather hazy and hard to follow. Despite the significant infodump in Chapter 3, enough just wasn't explained for me, or explained in a way I could fully comprehend, and disappointingly I never got a handle on much of it.

Setting: The world was also rather confusing. They seemed to live in an alternate, isolated New York City split into two halves: Light and Dark. These halves were separated by a wall and not supposed to mix (despite a train that ran through both of them), and yet at the same time they couldn't live without each other for magical reasons and were therefore forced to intermingle... somehow. Overall the whole world structure just didn't fit together for me, and I never made much sense of it.

Characters: For most of the book Lucie was an ostrich with her head in the sand, hoping that if she went with the flow and ignored the discontent around her it would just go away. This made her rather sloppy and susceptible at first, but the more mistakes she made the more she rediscovered the strength that she had embodied as the Golden Thread in the Dark, and by the end she was a force to be reckoned with. Carwyn was an emotional tug-of-war of mild affection and firm disgust from beginning to end, which made the final chapters both easier and harder to read. Overall though he was a complete jerk who's sass fell flat for me, and like Lucie I seriously craved Ethan whenever he was around. Perfect boyfriend Ethan was a bit too perfect in my opinion, but it was a soft and sweet perfection that, paired with his innocence and big heart, made Lucie's struggle to protect him worth rooting for.

Conclusion: While the beginning was a bit of an awkward and confusing struggle, the book gradually grew stronger until it delivered a powerful and tearful end. If you enjoy dark, tragic tales of love against the odds, then I recommend giving Tell the Wind and Fire a try.

Scribble Rating: 

3.5 of 5 Scribbles