Rating: 4/5 stars Pages: 352 Genre: Science fiction Publisher: Orbit books Release Date: May 5, 2020
After Valerie Black's mission is stolen out from under her, she gathers a crew of brilliant women to commandeer the ship meant to colonize a planet in the Goldilocks Zone.
Naomi Lovelace is her adoptive daughter and would do anything to become an astronaut. But the thing she's always dreamt of might turn out to be a nightmare. One of her fellow crewmates is concealing a terrible secret, and time might be running out for humanity's survival faster than anyone feared.
** Thanks to NetGalley and Orbit Books for providing me with an eARC of this book**
So, I thoroughly enjoyed this book! It definitely had me glued to the page because the stakes were just so high. It was one of those books that made stop and just go “oh shit.” And I love those books. Add to that the claustrophobia of being trapped on a spaceship with such high stakes and it was just a perfect recipe for a stay up all night reading it kind of book. SLIGHT BUT VAGUEly SPOILERY CW: I do feel a little obligated to mention that if you’re struggling particularly hard with the current pandemic and don’t want to read about something similar, it might be best to skip this book for now, cause I know I didn’t know and it definitely felt just a little too close to home (shitty timing on that one :( ). I think this is a case where flashbacks work especially well to increase the tension, and the slow reveal of information was just *chef’s kiss*. I especially loved the dynamic between Naomi and Valerie, which I think does a mother-daughter relationship really well. It’s so tense and fraught and aaaaaaaaaaaahhhh. Where I get caught up is that there were moments where what happened just… didn’t make sense. I don’t know if it’s cause I’m tired or what, but yeah, those moments where I really struggled with the suspension of disbelief. And there were moments where I felt that the women on that ship were just way too smart to behave that dumb. And my other hang-up was that I just found the other women on the ship weren’t that well fleshed out for me and were more props for Valerie and Naomi. Minor things that kind of irked me but didn’t ruin the experience for me overall—I still absolutely loved the book. Overall, I think this is a book that would appeal more to people who love character-driven sci-fi rather than hard sci-fi. There are definitely elements of the latter, and I appreciate that the author did a good deal of research, but it was definitely the emotional bonds that really made this book shine.
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