These Broken Stars

Rating 7/10 

A Brief Blurb:
These Broken Stars the first novel in Amie Kaufman and Meagan Spooner's Starbound Trilogy follows Lilac La Roux, the daughter of the richest man in the universe and Major Tarver Merendsen on their journey to rescue as their spaceship the Icarus crash lands on a deserted planet. It soon becomes clear that Lilac and Tarver are the only survivors out of 50,000 passengers and that no help is coming. 

Discussion:
Let me start off by saying this was not what I expected from the blurb (not the one I wrote. Obviously I mean the official one). For one, I for some reason thought that they were going to crash on a colonised planet and part of the plot would be keeping Lilac’s identity secret while they searched for help. What I didn’t expect was for it to be mysterious and creepy at times (tell me the whispers didn’t give you chills at first). In other words These Broken Stars was far better than I expected it would be.

One of my favourite aspects of the book was the beginning of each chapter where it showed a bit of dialogue between Tarver and his interrogator. I loved the way in which it set the tone for the upcoming chapter and filled me with a sense of anticipation and sometimes even dread.

I know this is completely predictable, but I loved Lilac and Tarver’s relationship. But I also loved their characters separately. Their banter was so much fun and I really enjoyed seeing their characters develop and how their perceptions of each other were constantly shifting as circumstances forced them to reveal themselves to each other. 

I did feel as though the world building however was lacking a bit and the world they exist in seemed so interesting. I hope we get to explore it more in the next books. Because of the lack of world building I was left feeling that Tarver and Lilac’s story was just the beginning to something. Almost as though it was a prequel, like the back story for what’s to come.

The ending of the book was quite strange and I don’t think i fully understood everything that happened but I did like it even if it was weird at times.

Overall and it definitely wasn’t what I expected. These Broken Stars extremely original (except for the weird titanic in space bit at the beginning which kept making me think of that Futurama episode where they take off Titanic and Bender is Jack), a surprising read, with a compelling characters and a beautiful love story. I hope you love it as much as i do.

-Rachael xx