Stranded IRL

by Kestra Pingree

H3R0complex : Would it be weird to fall in love with someone you’ve never met in real life?

Why did my best friend have to send me this message now?

I don’t have time for this. I don’t even know H3R0complex’s real name, face, gender, anything, but I think I might like to. This message does strange things to my heart.

I met H3R0complex through Ethereal War, my escape from reality and the world where my mom–the coolest game developer–still exists in the form of an NPC.

My mom lost the fight against cancer four years ago.

I’ve made it my mission to preserve my mom’s memory by taking control of Ethereal War, pulling strings behind the scenes with my backdoor. I know how it sounds, but I don’t care. I have the power to do this–or I would if it wasn’t for the hacker APOSTATE.

APOSTATE is destroying Ethereal War with their cheats, and my grades are suffering for it. My dad has noticed, and even someone as laid-back as him could do something drastic if I don’t pretend like everything is fine.

I have enough to worry about, right?

- message deleted -

205 pages, Kindle Edition

Published December 25, 2023

About the author

Kestra Pingree is a creative who doesn’t know how to stop. They are first and foremost a writer and storyteller with an endless library of books in their head just waiting to be typed. They are also an artist and animator, as well as a singer, songwriter, and voice actor. One day they swear they’re going to make their own video game, too.

If it involves creating, they are there.

They can also be seen cuddling their cat, reading, or playing video games.

Reviews

[Haley · Rating 1 out of 5]

1⭐️ within the first chapter I knew this wasn’t going to be something I liked, not what I expected. This book went into way too much detail about a video game that the plot was lost. Quite frankly could not care less about what characters, demons, angels,, how to play a fictional game in this book, skip skip skipped. Not to mention the messaging communications only happened like 3-4 times the whole book. Plus finally meeting the other character in person at 50%…. Finally… MEETING not even interacting 1:1. Once she puts it together it’s in the last three pages. No flirting, how is this part of the romance category. This was nothing but a how to play the EW game for dummies plus a girl being forced to stop bc she’s literally addicted and withdrawing.

I’m probably not reading the rest of the series, if the next book was out now I’d contemplate it. I’m positive whatever happens next could have been put into one book without those unnecessary details :( I can tell Ever and Colton’s love story would have been bomb

[Lindsay · Rating 2 out of 5]

not for me

This is not my normal type of book but I was intrigued by the blurb and picked it up. Ever seems to think that everyone is conspiring against her and that really annoyed me. I kept calling her a paranoid ego-brat in my head as I read through this book. I thought she acted way under her age instead of like a senior graduating high school. I was hoping there was a bit of romance but for the majority of the book the focus is on Ever and her unhealthy habits. There were hints to her healing from her past but I didn’t see a ton of growth from her.
I had a few guesses as to what was going to happen and they did. There was really great potential with this book and I was very disappointed to find out that it not only ends on a cliffhanger but it’s also a four book series. That part is sort of on me, but while reading I didn’t feel like a ton happened. I loved the gaming world that was created, I thought it sounded really cool, though.


Gaming, logged off, stranded, Enemies, teenager, graduate, senior, farm therapy, cut off from society.

[lila onori · Rating 1 out of 5]

There is absolutely no way a real person wrote this book, if you can even call it that. If you told me an AI wrote this I would have already been thinking that its like the author asked chatgpt to write a novel, then hit copy and paste. There is no plot, no story, conflicting personality traits in characters, characters that show up for 2 chapters, are given a somewhat distinguished background and then contribute nothing to the plot or story, speaking of the plot… pretty sure they forgot about that one. Yeah, there is no plot or clear motives throughout, like I genuinely could not tell you what the main character, I couldn’t even tell you her name, was attempting to accomplish during the duration of the book other than prolonging the lifespan of her video game which she used obsessively as a coping mechanism. Also, don’t get me started on the confusing, overcomplicated sentence structure, 90% is unnecessary internal monologue and the dialogue is so unnatural. Nothing flows and you can never tell what is going on. I can go on and on about the many things this “work” left me bewildered by but one final thing was the complete lack of understanding of human behavior. None of the characters had coherent personality traits they stayed consistent through the behavior without and contradictory moments. There are three(i think) more books in the series and I’m lowkey tempted to read them out of curiosity. Anyways, I guess that’s what I get for reading a book I found on the free section of the apple books app…

[Stevie · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a cute story

Don’t get me wrong. It is laced with heartache. Though there is the constant of trying to figure out who you can trust. All revolved around a game. Honestly the game is more than just a game to the MFC. The dad needs to find a way to see how she is dealing with her own loss. Even if it is different from how he is. There is sadness in this book. The mystory part of this book was my favorite part.

[Duchess · Rating 3 out of 5]

Definitely stranded..

This book definitely left me stranded, I wanted to like it so much. However, it just left me kind of empty of words. Maybe because I met my significant other through online gaming. I was expecting so much more; perhaps stranded on book one, where I leave my footprint.

[scifigirl · Rating 1 out of 5]

DNF @ 10%
I went in hoping for a cool MMORPG sort of story, had to give up when I got so confused about what the setting was and what was going on.

[Reading · Rating 1 out of 5]

was fucking terrible

[Shelley Cramer · Rating 1 out of 5]

made it to page 24 before I gave up. details are important, but how much description of a building do we need?