Friday, August 17, 2018

Science Fiction Mini-Reviews

Obscura by Joe Hart (2018)

In the near future, a dementia-like disease called Losian's is striking Earth's population.  Dr. Gillian Ryan is researching a cure when she accepts a position to study a crew on a space station that's exhibiting similar symptoms.  However, the mission turns out to be not what she expected and she finds herself in serious danger.

This book was part science fiction, part thriller, and part mystery.  When Gillian finds out after she's already in space that they're actually headed to Mars to examine a crew working on a top secret mission, I felt for her - she had no clue she would be millions of miles away from her daughter, who is suffering from Losian's.  During the journey and after they reach the Mars station, there's this pervasive sense that something is very wrong.  It didn't help that Gillian was somewhat of an unreliable narrator (she has an addition to painkillers), so sometimes it was hard to know what was real and who to trust.

The  twists and turns just kept coming, and the space setting really added to the tension.  I thought the mystery got a bit muddled at times, but the pacing of the story was so good and I loved the ending.  4 stars


The Loneliest Girl in the Universe by Lauren James (2018)

Romy has been alone for years on a spaceship speeding away to a potential Earth II since her parents died when she learns that another ship is on its way.

Being alone in space is probably one of my worst nightmares, but Romy seems to handle it fairly well.  Her father taught her a lot about the ship and survival, so even though it literally takes years to send communications back and forth to Earth, teenage Romy isn't doing too bad.  Then, communications with Earth slow and stop, but Romy is hoping she'll get some answers from J, commander of the ship that is joining her mission.  However, strange things start happening and J seems a bit off.

It takes awhile for the real action to start in the story, but I was never bored.  It was interesting learning about Romy's life (although I wish the story of how she came to be alone had been presented a tad earlier), and I think the author did a great job capturing how Romy is a captain of a ship (although not by choice) but still a teenager (forming a crush on J).  This book was more of a thriller than I was expecting, and I loved all the surprises that kept cropping up during the second half of the book.  If you're looking for a space thriller that will give you the creeps and yet still has a lot of heart, this is the book for you.  4 stars

18 comments:

  1. Adding both of these to my TBR immediately!!

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  2. Loneliest Girl is already on my TBR list, but I want to read both of these. Great reviews!

    Aj @ Read All The Things!

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    1. They were both so good, I hope you love them!

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  3. I've had Loneliest Girl on my TBR list for /ages/ and I'm glad to hear how good it is!

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  4. I love science ficiton so I think I definitely need to check out both of these books. Thanks for sharing! :D

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  5. I've already had Obscura on my Kindle for quite a while, but I haven't read it yet. I need to do that. It still sounds very interesting to me. As to Loneliest Girl, that's a new one to me and it also sounds great. Thanks for these!

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  6. Lovely reviews! I'm really happy you enjoyed The Loneliest Girl, I loved that one so much and it surprised me a lot, I did not see that ending coming at all haha :)

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    1. No, it definitely had some good twists and turns!

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  7. Totally agree with what you say about The Loneliest Girl! I also didn't expect it to be a thriller - that shocked me, haha - and it was definitely a lot creepier and darker than I was expecting. But I enjoyed it, and it gave me the chills :)

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    1. It had so many great elements - it had the creeps, it was a thriller, but it was also about family - I loved it!

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  8. Obscura sounds like a fun read! A lot of thrillers I read are starting to feel like all the other thrillers to me and the setting of this one seems much more unique :)

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    1. I hear ya - I used to read so many thrillers, I feel like I've slowed down because nothing is surprising me anymore. I am reading a lot of stories set in space, though!

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  9. That's cool that The Loneliest Girl actually has the feel of a thriller. I didn't realize that. Both of these books are on my TBR so I'm really glad to hear they were both good reads for you.

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  10. I saw The Loneliest Girl in the Universe last week at B&N and added it to my list. It sounds really good!

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I'm so glad you stopped by, and I would love to hear your thoughts! Comments are always greatly appreciated!