smokedshelves's reviews
483 reviews

thank you to penguin teen and viking books for young readers for a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

i guess you could call this bonnie and clyde set in space. but honestly, besides a few quotes at the beginning of each part, and the fact that shane and ava were star-crossed lovers who also happened to be fugitives, it wasn’t really all that comparable…

i hate to say this is just another book in a recent string of books that i just don’t particularly care for. another mediocre book that’ll be forgotten by the end of the month, if you will.

none of the three main characters particularly stood out to me with their personalities. it kind of felt like they were all going in circles with their characterizations. and a particular choice just made it feel like none of the story felt worth it, you know?? (which i guess is accurate to the real story, but still. a lot else has changed, why not that.) it felt like the author was trying to go for six of crows vibes but i just didn’t feel the connection with any of them. besides my personal neutrality towards shane and ava, jared said like literally nothing??? i was expecting for him to be more prominent in the story honestly, given he was with their “gang” before the events kicked off. but nope, he was just kind of there. clara’s main thing was not to trust anyone. ares was the dick. (i can’t even really remember the other two’s names oops). that was it for them. cyrus was honestly the only one i somewhat enjoyed reading from actually. (not great when you’re trying do to bonnie and clyde, and you prefer the third mc who is neither of those).

the world building was subpar to say the least. you mean to tell me that a whole planet goes radio silent for months and not another single other planet in a supposedly large system cares? like at all? nakara has not literally one other ally i guess??? but whatever. i don’t expect most ya sci-fi space operas to be particularly fleshed out, so i kind of knew i needed to suspend my belief for that one. but i guess, i just couldn’t really understand noth’s reasoning for doing literally anything she did. we never really learned her motivations for wanting to invade nakara other than the one time she mentioned to cordova she wants more money… i guess, lol. idk, i guess i found where i personally draw my line. like if you want to make her the villain, that’s fine. but give us more of a reason why she wants and needs this invasion to happen.

overall, i was just hoping for more cohesion. and the poor development was especially noticeable for the last 15%. i feel like a few things were thrown into there just because the author wanted to. shane and ava’s storyline in particular. cyrus and lark kissing, which i personally just didn’t get any of the feelings cyrus was saying he felt toward lark. the man barely thought about him. and now apparently they’ve had this strong chemistry the whole time? noth, as i mentioned.

and i personally think, the author wanted to set it up so that it could either be considered a standalone. but also, set up so that it could potentially get picked up for a second book to be published down the road. like a decent amount felt left open ended. and that’s an odd way to finish a (currently?) standalone book.

thank you to penguin teen and razorbill for a copy of the book in exchange for an honest review.

i think the first thing i need to mention is the queer rep in this book. i’ve been seeing it mentioned a lot in marketing that it’s got a queer friendship group. and that’s true. but at this point in the book both our main characters seem to identify as cishet. we do have a few lesbian side characters, including the female main character’s parents being in a sapphic relationship, and the male main character’s best friend. we also have an enby side character in a sapphic relationship. *so* do with that what you will.

do i wish our female main character was on the ace spectrum… yeah. i just personally think it would’ve given bethany a lot more depth into her previous experiences and reactions surrounding sex and sexuality. and in my mind, it would’ve given me essentially an explanation to why she literally burst out crying after hearing her friend had sex (and yes, i know it was portrayed as being apart of her personality. she cries. a lot. but i’m just saying…) but who knows, could it be something, a term, an identity, she just doesn’t know of at this point in the book. maybe.

as for the actual story, it was fine. i think their justifications for fake dating was definitely better than some i’ve seen before, for sure. but it felt as though not much happened in this story but also somehow dragged a bit in sections? it took them like 20% of the book to get to their starting point of their fake dating, fine. but that was after he was already dumped twice and she was already rejected twice. then they fake date for a while. but somehow the ending felt so rushed to me? like, i wanted it to be a bit longer, but also not really. and that, i can’t really explain. but it’s definitely an interesting phenomenon.

also, saylor felt *so* eager to set them up like a literal day after she’d broken up with him. is that not strange to anyone else?? are the cishets okay??

also also, i know jake’s father made him go through the whole tattoo healing process but as someone with multiple tattoos, his father should not have even let him get one. he’s currently a junior in this story, so was like 16 maybe 17. yeah, that’s illegal in the state of california. legal tattooing age is 18, regardless of parental permission in that state and it’s likely jake was even at least a year or more younger. i know it was just one line. but anyone with tattoos would know that an artist wouldn’t risk that, even if it's their own child. (also also also, why does jake only ever wear his parents’ company merch?)

i’m writing this opening part about 60% into the book. i can for almost certain tell you i’m going to forget anything about this book in about 3 days.

y’all, there are so many perspectives, all muddled together. they’re not all that particularly different in voice. nor do we know who’s the character we’re following from any written indication. it makes my brain swim to catch up, and then we often move onto the next perspective by then… i genuinely would like to know the reason for writing it like this. and besides giving each of the many characters one (1) personality trait that they grab on for dear life, i genuinely wouldn’t have been able to discern who’s who. (and honestly i didn’t i swear like five characters popped up in the middle of the story and apparently we knew them???)

besides that absolute mess of a style choice, the actual pace and lack of commentary in this book says it all. it feels to me like the author had a unique concept and setting and then just threw everything at the wall. she included all these perspectives that were completely unnecessary, and the goal of the story itself got convoluted in the middle. to me, it really seems like a few more passes should’ve been made to trim the story down from nearly 500 pages. there was no reason for this story to have taken us that long, and i personally feel like it accomplished nothing. to say, finishing the book was my favorite part would be an unfortunate truth. it just was not at all as well constructed as i was hoping. 

thank you to penguin teen and putnam sons books for young readers for an advanced copy of the book in exchange for an honest review.

i’ve had a copy of this book for a while now actually. but unexpectedly this became my first read for disability pride, which was completely unplanned but very good timing. so yeah, i guess let’s talk about my personal draw to this book. i’m often very outspoken about being queer and disabled. and while i don’t talk about my disabilities often, they range from learning disabilities to chronic illness, along the spectrum. but i’m not hard of hearing (hoh) or deaf personally. my main draw to a book about a deaf and blind summer camp is, of course, because i am disabled, so i strive to read more stories centering disability, period. but also because my dad is actually hard of hearing.

it’s not actually something i’ve ever mentioned in any online book space, but it’s something in my personal life. he has some loss of hearing in his right ear that occurred in his early adulthood. and while he was fitted for a hearing aid, he actually chose not to wear it and hasn’t since well… at least my entire life. you have to speak to him on his “good side” otherwise he wont hear you and say “huh?” or “what”. he blasts music, tv, anything really. and you’ll often see him covering his ears in loud spaces. why am i talking about my dad, who probably wouldn’t consider himself deaf, when this book is about a teenage girl at a summer-camp for deaf and blind campers. well, because he honestly reminds me of lilah.

of course, they’re quite absolutely completely in everything else. but they share this common thread. and the way lilah interacts with the world, especially in the beginning of these events, it felt familiar to me. but also not, since well, i’ve got pretty damn good hearing myself. but seeing how lilah speaks to others, how she misses words. it gives me a bit better understanding of what my own parent might experience.

but anyways, genuinely enough about me. i think we understand that i was pretty excited to read this book. and i can say it was a delight. it obviously goes a bit heavy handed on the conversations surrounding the deaf community, and what makes someone qualify to label themselves as deaf. or the concept of learning from the deaf community if you want to learn sign. but genuinely, it was still nice to see lilah immerse herself. commit herself to try to learn the language of her community, even if she messes up in embarrassing ways. she learns and grows. she makes mistakes any person learning a new language does. but eventually she begins to hold her own, grow confident in her skills and it was lovely.

however, besides a few notable events (the tornado, the shopping scene), it really felt as though a majority of the book was pretty repetitive. i recognize it mimics the concept of the campers doing similar activities. hell, i get it. i worked at a specialized camp. i recognize that you do similar things. but i feel like we honestly didn’t get to see enough interactions with the other counselors besides isaac as much as i wish we did. i think we had the chance to see from such a lovely, diverse group of characters. each choosing to communicate in the world, in the deaf community in their own unique ways. we had glimpses, but i truly wish we learned more from them. i think that would’ve made me enjoy this a ton more.

overall though, this was truly a quick, interesting read that introduced me to a community i’ve always wanted more insight to. i’m excited to see where anna sortino goes in her sophomore novel, and i’ll definitely be following along closely.

this rating has nothing to do with the book. i just always find poetry as 3ish star reads. it's not really my favorite format but i try to give it a chance every now and then. please still pick this book up if you love poetry!!

thank you to macmillan-tor/forge, tor teen, and netgalley for a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

so i don’t know if this was my brain being dense, but i struggled my way through this book, barely following along with the sheer number of characters and storylines we followed. not only did it take a solid 40% of the book for me to even feel like anything was happening, after we were introduced to the easily 20+ characters. what was happening was honestly kind of boring to me. i’m totally fine with a fantasy book being slow as long as there’s intrigue in the story. and unfortunately, this just didn’t hav that to me.

i truly just think we were following too many characters, and our main three(ish) povs’ of the twins + valentina, i just couldn’t get behind any of them or their actions. they, unfortunately, just annoyed me so much with their motivations, their inability to communicate ANYTHING. it made me feel so discombobulated. then we throw in the other random povs, which for the most part have little to no importance to what’s happening in the story. and that left me feeling lost. like, at the final events, and i still can’t even figure out who’s who kind of lost.

now, am i going to read the sequel… i honestly don’t know. i think i need like 5 days to process what i even just read before i consider it. i don’t think i could handle reading about any more car crashes tbh (no seriously, how were there two in the span of like 100 pages??? what are even the odds in real life of that happening like 3?? days apart).