Thank you to NetGalley and the author, Joseph Young, for sending me this ARC!
Sadly, I will be DNF’ing this book at 66%. I wanted to like this book so much, and initially I did. It had an interesting premise, started strong, and immediately grabbed my attention. I enjoyed getting to know each character and how they fit into the crew. However, it all started going downhill for me after the first kiss scene. It felt forced to say the least. There was no buildup to it; we were minding our own business one minute, and the main character and the love interest were kissing the next minute. Only one brief line before this scene made me guess he was the love interest, but I wasn’t sure. No matter how beautifully written the scene was, I felt disconnected and confused by what had just occurred. From then on, I lost immersion in the world Young had built. There were many revelations and another romance scene where I felt no hinting or foreshadowing, making the scenes feel hollow and superficial.
I vaguely mentioned this before, but the writing throughout the book was excellent. It helped with visualising all the scenes Young was painting. However, in some scenes, there was more telling than showing the reader, for example, in the first and second kiss scenes, we were told there was tension rather than actually feeling the tension ourselves. Overall, this book was not an adult book but read like a middle-grade book; for example, the postscript chapters summarise what has happened thus far. This isn’t necessarily bad, but when I entered this book, I expected a more mature read. Alternatively, I did enjoy the darker themes in this story, but sadly, I didn’t get to see how they were fully dealt with due to dnf’ing.
Unfortunately, this story fell flat for me, so I would not recommend it or continue with this series. Nevertheless, I appreciate the opportunity to read it.