IN SHORT: This young adult Science Fiction Book set on two planets has romance and mystery.

REVIEW

Growing up on a second-tier planet plagued with pollution and economic depression, and having to work in a bar to help support her family, Viktoria Hale knows poverty and need. She’s wanted for so long to escape to a better place, to better living conditions, if it’s just to the cleaner and richer planet just next to hers. Then she learns that the mysterious benefactor who paid for her and her sister to have a good education, at least, was a billionaire. When he died, his will stipulated that his estranged son, educated on a distant planet and not seen for years, marry her to qualify to inherit his billions.

But Leo Chapin is killed en route to meet Vika on Philomenis, and that leaves her back at square one — until the next people in line for the fortune, a kind older couple, invite her to live with them on Ploutos. Suddenly, Vika is thrust into a completely different life, with riches beyond her imagining.

Her life and future aren’t completely sure, though, and Vika ends up feeling she may have to marry someone she doesn’t care for after all to solidify her security and that of her family. But then she starts having to worry about her safety and that of the couple with whom she lives when an explosion rocks an aircraft they are on. Signs seem to be pointing to someone trying to get rid of more beneficiaries of the inheritance, but it’s a mystery who the culprit could be.

Vika finds herself having to turn to the one person she doesn’t like at all but who is in a position to help her: Sky Foster, the assistant to her guardians. Something about him seems a little off, and she hasn’t been able to really trust him. But as they work together to investigate the truth, she starts finding he isn’t as bad as she thinks.

The Stars Between Us is set where space travel is possible and there are other advanced technologies, but it’s not crucial to the essential plot. It could be set at pretty much any time and place. Two young people find out what’s most important to them, and find each other. They face difficult choices and danger.

I enjoyed this young Adult Science Fiction book and found myself rooting for our heroine, who is tough and more than a little jaded by what she’s gone through. The setting was a bonus, since space stories tend to hook me (oh, you know, Skyward, Illuminae,These Broken Stars…). Now I’ll go back and read some of the author’s other books, one of which I already had on my to-read list from a while back!

RATING

Rated: Moderate. Profanity includes around 15 instances of moderate profanity, 45 uses of mild language, and around 16 instances of the name of Deity in vain. There are almost 30 instances of “feck” or “fecking,” an Irish milder alternative to strong profanity. There are also about 15 uses of the British profanity starting with bl-, which is not profanity in the U.S. There is some kissing and references to a couple of characters having affairs. Violence includes attempted murders made to look like accidents, deaths and injuries from bombings, a brief fistfight, and harsh treatment of people by overseers.

*I received an ARC of this book in exchange for my honest review.

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