Book Review: These Broken Stars

Title: These Broken Stars

Author: Amie Kaufman and Meagan Spooner

Genre: YA Sci-Fi

Review:

Haunting. That's the only word that I can think of that even begins to describe These Broken Stars. I've been itching to read this book since forever, so I'm super excited to be writing this review now.

The novel opens right up with an interrogation being conducted with Tarver, one of the main characters in the novel (and by far my favorite character.) As Tarver answers questions, flashbacks occurs that tell readers what really happened to The Accident and leaves them wondering why Tarver is lying. The flashbacks are told in both Tarver and Lilac's (other main character) point of view, which I thought added a nice depth to both characters.

In many ways, the premise of These Broken Stars reminded me that of the movie the Titanic. Lilac is the daughter of the most powerful man in the universe whilst Tarver is just a nobody. The Icarus, the most advanced, luxury space-liner suffers a similar fate to the Titanic when it's yanked out of hyperspace and crashes on a strange planet, leaving Tarver and Lilac as the sole survivors of the tragedy. Together, they must cooperate to survive this strangely familiar world.

According to Tarver, the plants and wildlife are almost identical to the ones he sees on colonized planets, save a difference in color, size, etc. This confuses him because a planet like this should've been filled with people long ago--and they even find man made buildings...just no people.  Things quickly grow strange/creepy when Lilac begins to hear murmurs of voice Tarver can't seem to hear. Then she begins to see ghostly figures. The writing here was so well done even I began to hear voice (and rest assured I'm not mad!) and have goosebump cover my skin!

Also, Lilac and Tarver reminded me of the June and Day dynamo from Legend. Tarver, like Day, is just a common boy and utterly unaware of who Lilac was. On the other hand, he isn't just some dumb kid--he's tough mentally and physically. Lilac, like June, is society's darling. the media love her and she's well accustomed to wealth (perhaps a bit too accustomed.) Both characters also share the same stubborn sense of pride. However, I personally though Lilac had too much hubris, probably due to the way she was brought up), but eventually Lilac learned to swallow down her pride and work with Tarver (thank goodness!) The main difference between Lilac and June is that she's not-so-great at surviving in the wilderness.

The authors were fantastic with building and maintain suspense throughout the entire novel. The world building was also vivid as well--it was all showing and not telling. My only whim is that even though a lot of the pages were developed to character building, I didn't become as attached to Tarver and Lilac as I would've liked. Nevertheless, I will definitely pick up the next book in the series!

I highly recommend this book to fans of the Across the Universe trilogy.

Rating: