Starflight
Release date: Feb. 2, 2016
Author: Melissa Landers
Genre: YA Speculative Fiction (Sci-fi)
Themes: Space-travel, trust, forgiveness, love, friendship
Rating: 4 stars
Why did I read it?: I read the author’s Alienated series and loved it, so I requested this ARC.

Landers, Melissa. Starflight. Disney-Hyperion, 2016. Print. ISBN-13: 978-1484723241.
Formats available: hardcover. Paperback $13.49 (amazon.com)

Synopsis (from amazon.com)

My Thoughts:
**I received this book as a free egalley from netgalley.com in return for an honest review**

The author describes this book as a “romantic Firefly, or Guardians of the Galaxy” and I think thats a fair statement. Starflight is a fun and fast YA romp through space. Written from the dual perspectives of the male and female main characters, we see these two people who grew up in vastly different social strata (and who butted heads throughout high school) forced together on a perilous race across galaxies. Both are hiding secrets from the other, and neither trusts each other, and yet Doran and Solara will find they need to rely on each other to overcome enemies new and old. Together they find that sometimes you put your trust in the wrong people, and sometimes you are forced to rely on those you don’t trust at all.

I enjoyed this book, though I never really connected to Solara as a character. I felt that Doran was a more strongly developed and fully realized character than Solara, and just didn’t feel the author put an equal amount of time in developing Solara as she did Doran. I actually found myself connecting with his feelings, fears, and character arc more than Solara’s, which I found unusual ini a YA book as usually the female character tends to be the more fully developed of the two. The world building was pretty good, we’re given just enough understanding of how this world (or worlds, really) work that I’m intrigued to learn more about it in the following books (this is the first book in a planned series). There are several other characters introduced which were interesting and fun, though very under-developed thus far. But I believe that is intentional, as the following books feature those people as main characters, I believe, therefore it seems we are not meant to “get to know them” too much in this book.

The pacing is pretty good, a tad bit jumpy here and there, and several of the plot devices felt a bit “expected,” but there are a couple of twists in there to keep it from being stale, and overall I found this to be a satisfying space-travel story. I will absolutely pick up the sequel to see what happens next, whenever it should be released!

Liked it? Loved it? Gotta have more of it?
There is a planned sequel to Starflight, but no title or release date has been provided yet!

In the meantime you might like to try:

• Illuminae (links to my review)
• These Broken Stars (links to my review)
• Alienated (links to my review)

Extras:

• Melissa Lander’s Starflight series website
• This book is still months away from being released so I’m hoping more extras will be coming soon!

About the Author:
Melissa Landers is a YA author who often writes fun and fast-paced alien or space-travel romances.

Find her online:

• on her website.
• on Facebook
• and on twitter @Melissa_Landers