Interesting story with some twists and turns and characters. The plot was fun. I did enjoy the POV changes, it helped move the story along.

Unfortunately, this book was just not for me and i'm really bummed out about that because before starting this book, I was extremely excited about the premise and really thought it was going to be great (I mean; female pirates in space? Sign me up!)

It started off promising, but it just went downhill from there for me. The execution of this book... I just wasn't able to really connect with it all..

If you’re planning to pick this up, I hope you have a much better time reading it than I have.

I couldn't connect with the characters or with the writing. This was a miss for me. I am willing to give the authors' another shot at other books, but this one just wasn't for me.

Loved the book would definitely recommend! I loved the characters and how the author set up the story.

Started to read this, forced my self to read some more, but finally just gave up. Not for me. I do enjoy sci-fi, just not this one. I am sure it will find it's audience. But I just didn't get drawn in and ceased to care pretty quickly. Sorry.

An interesting sci-fi setting and conflict, but I found the characters a bit difficult; I’m not a fan of all the video-game style killing without thought or consequences. I finished the book but despite the cliffhanger I have no interest in the sequel.

Zenith was one of my anticipated reads of 2018. Ever since I read the description for the book I was excited to read it because it sounded like something I would really enjoy reading. I don’t tend to read that many sci-fi books but the description for this one grabbed my attention and I couldn’t wait to get my hands on the book. Now having read Zenith, on the whole I did really enjoy it and it definitely deserves all the hypes and praise its been getting.

One of the main problems I had with this book was the main character Andi. I just didn’t like her and found it hard to connect with her, which meant that I didn’t really want to be on the journey with her. She just seemed so dull and uninteresting, and thats not what you want in a main character. Luckily Zenith is told from different perspectives and Andi isn’t the only character you have to read about. But because she is a main character, whenever she popped up it annoyed me a little and made me disconnect from the story. I did find the multiple character perspectives a little confusing because I didnt know who the characters were, and because the cast for Zenith is pretty big it did take a while to remember who was who.

I am not going to lie it did take me a while to get into this book. The first hundred pages or so were a little bit of a chore and I really wasn’t connecting with the story or the characters. But I am happy to say that once I got past the hundred page mark the story started to get a little more interesting and I got used to the different points of views of the characters. So I would suggest to stick with the book if you are finding the first part of the book is a little slow.

Even though Zenith is a chunk of a book with five hundred pages, once I got into the story, it didn’t feel that long. I don’t know if thats because the chapters are really small or because each chapter is told from a different characters perspectives. Both of these factors meant that I never got bored with the book because after a few pages I would be one a different chapter and reading about a different character.

I found the writing for Zenith to be top notch, both of the authors did an amazing job in describing and bringing to life the space setting, and the characters. I didn’t feel too bogged down with information when reading Zenith, and instead it felt like I was fed information slowly to build a vivid imagine of the books setting and its characters. I thought that both the authors wrote really well together. I haven’t read many books that have been written by two authors, but sometimes you can tell because the story and the writing doesn’t flow right, but with Zenith it worked perfectly.

Even though Zenith is not perfect and it does have its problems, I would still recommend reading it and trying it out for yourself. For me the positives out way the negatives to make this book still an enjoyable read. The story and some of the characters make this book a really thrilling read and I will continue with this series and read the next book when its released.

I had trouble starting this book, and I had trouble finishing it once I started. This may just not be a book for me.

OMG! This book was crazy!! I can't believe I picked this up randomly waiting for an appointment, not even knowing that it even existed. I would have missed out on one of the best sci-fi books I've ever read! This was one intense freaken ride!

Zenith is a high flying sci-fi drama that screamed from the first page till it's gasping, shocking end. These authors are an amazing team. The writing is strong, demanding of my attention and painted a horrific and vivid picture that I was quite disturbed by many times while reading. With six different point of views we get a lot of different history and back-story to fill the plot with energy and anticipation to keep the pages non-stop turning, while the rest of the book is filled with worlds of action punched entertainment and conflicted drama that I love in my sci-fi adventures. All though this has very little romance, what we did get was even better and fit the tone of the story rather well. I do however have hopes for the next one;)

I really adored every single one of these characters. Andi and her crew of misfits rebels are so incredible. I loved the chemistry between this family and the humor they provided when things got ugly and intense. Androma Racella is the Bloody Baroness, and her reputation of her cold and unflinching ways ring true, but there is more to this murderous pirate and her 'dance' and regrets make her feel more human and relatable. Lira, Breck and Gilly brings a splash of color to the dark moods but just as badass as they come. Dex is also a favorite, he has his own agenda's and his own reasons for how things play out, but this book wouldn't be the same without him. As for Valen, Nor and Elaren, well lets just say that I never saw the connection coming and dame that was freaken good!!

I really can't express how much I loved this book, it was such a blast reading. It was dark and brutal and that ending blew me away! I can't wait to get my hands on the next book! It hurts!! Epic and entertaining as hell!!

I loved the concept and tried so very hard to get into this book, but very much in the same way Stephen King diverts into offshoots, so did this book and I struggled to stay engaged.
On the otherhand, Stephen King readers will love it.

Andromeda and her girls hooked me from the very beginning. By the end of the novel I felt extremely saddened by the realization that I would never get to be a part of her crew. This “family” tugs on the heart strings without being sappy and the action is nonstop. I love books that make me want things for the characters and this one does not disappoint. Definitely one of my top recommendations for teens.

Zenith feels like a first draft.

This was difficult to finish, unfortunately. I think the authors are wonderful people, so keep in mind that this rating is not a reflection of how I view them as individuals, but simply how I feel about this particular piece of work.

I really wanted to like this. I tried to. But I couldn't. Anyway, I wish them both the best with their future books.

So...yeah...glancing at the reviews for this book, most of which are pretty awful, I thought to myself that this wasn't going to go well. I'll either DNF or bemoan the loss of the precious time it took to read this teen/ya garbage. I mean, some readers lost their sh*t as they ranted in disgust.

Controversial, right!?!? So, of course, I had to read this book.

Guess what? Not as awful as everyone who tore it apart made it out to be. And this book was shredddddd-ed! I personally thought it was a fun, engaging, easy read and it kept me entertained right off the bat to the very end. Loved the world building, the imagery, the bouts of poetic observation amidst the vacuous, sometimes immature to the point of cringing dialogue/character interaction. There was a lot of that. But there was also a lot of this:

"...The terraformed quadrant was so odd. So beautiful. Massive tree trunks as large as buildings stood like sentries around her. The further she walked, the more undergrowth began to take over the ground— strange, fernlike plants with jagged leaves, green melding into purple ends that gently swept across her calves. Andi looked up, craning her neck to see into the canopy. It was magnificent tonight, the sky like a painted ceiling, the wink of distant planets and moons glowing in otherworldly shades through the darkness. Every so often, a blazing ball of fire shot past overhead—a star , dying out as it fell. The air was comfortably cool, enough to fill her chest with a spark of life, and when the wind blew, the leaves on the trees seemed to whisper overhead, then tumbled down like a colorful rain, twisting and dancing as they neared the ground..."

I thought it was fine. Sure the characters were fairly two-dimensional and some elements seemed forced. Am I mad at it? No. Why? Because I've read worse teen/ya and lived to review the tale. Is it Nobel prize winning material? Not unless the Committee read the synopsis, "female space pirates team up with bounty hunter to face off evil vengeful queen bent on mercilessly destroying the planet", and was thereby tempted to relax the literary rules for judging body of work.

This book is not over-sexed, emo-angsty, fae-fetish, reverse-harem gobbledygook. This book is not a call out, not a mind bender, not a deal maker or a deal breaker. There was no philosophy. Just a bunch of people with a lot of hang-ups trying to work through a lot of pain. Truly not fire fodder. Really just another teen read that wastes the same amount of time as any other zany, easy on the eyes, cheesy, funny at times, bloody at times, annoying at times kinda story. You know.... typical.

A reviewer or two mentioned a rape scene. I think I might have missed it, because the whole time I was reading I was steeling myself in preparation for facing #metoo trauma in teen/ya sci-fi...and then the book ended... and I exhaled.

Things I didn't like? "Devilishly" anything. Why this was an adverb of choice, I cannot tell you. I can only say it was prolific for an adverb, and I wished it would stop.

All in all, I am pleasantly surprised, I enjoyed this read and I am anticipating the next in the series.

It's not a perfect novel by any means. It did keep my attention though. The multiple perspectives gave a depth to an otherwise mediocre YA novel. The sequels will not be something I'll search out, but I am curious as to where the series will take the readers. I would reccomend this book to older young adults. The more "adult" themes (allusions to sex mostly), are not for the younger teens.

I unfortunately did not finish this book because of the pacing, and the writing style. The book didn't hook me up the way I was expecting it to, and so I didn't have the urge to power through and read the rest of the galley. Since I wasn't captivated by the writing style at all, the pacing really slowed down for me.

Maybe I wasn't in the mood for this when I read it, and so I might give this book another chance next time. But this is what I have to say for now.

Between a 3 and 3.5.

**Huge thank you to NetGalley and Harlequin Teen for providing me a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own.**

TL;DR:

This book was meh. It has some interesting ideas but it felt cluttered. There was too much going on and far too many repetitive sections that could have been shaved out to allow for a more comprehensive story.

I didn't hate this book, but it's not one I'm going to be recommending and will probably fade from my memory by the end of the year. If you're dying to read this book, check it out from your library and give it a shot. You might like it. I do highly recommend the audiobook, it made some parts easier to enjoy and allowed me to fly through the story. When reading it on my e-reader, it took me a while to read it.

Yeah, not worth the hate but not worth the hype. While the space pirates came through, I didn't feel like we got the epic space story we were promised. There were traces of it hiding in the pages, but it didn't quite come through.

FULL REVIEW:

So I'm going to preface this review saying that I can separate the book from the author. That being said, this book was....interesting. It wasn't as bad as early reviews lead me to believe but it's not a new favorite. This book was fine, though the audiobook was fantastic and is definitely one of the reasons I finished the book as quickly as I did. Oh and while this is a spoiler-free book review, I did vaguely talk about things that happen later in the story. If you're worried about anything that may be considered a spoiler (I don't think I included any, but you never know), just skip down to my final thoughts section.

Okay, so the book. It felt like a mish-mash of interesting ideas sprinkled in with some YA tropes and yeah, it was a bit all over the place. In the first 35% of the book (so like the first 200 pages) the Marauder's get captured, Andi and love interest reveal they are ex-love interests, a quest is given AND completed, we read in 4 POVs, and go to like 3 different locations. Basically, think of the first half of Guardians of the Galaxy up to the prison escape scene. I have no problem with that. Let the book be fast-paced, let the book keep us going from one scene to the next. This book decided not to be fast-paced, rather get a lot of stuff done really quickly then slow it down for the remained 65% of the book.

One of the weakest parts of this book was how repetitive it was. Numerous times we had to hear about how Andi was mourning the death of her friend or how she and Dex were ex-lovers who still lusted after each other and engaged in an anticlimactic will they won't they romance. There were several times where the plot was put on hold to relive one of these moments. The flashback scenes were identical (or gave us the identical information) numerous times that by the time we actually learned what happened, I personally didn't care.

That being said, one of the strengths of this book were the side characters. They had interesting personalities, the Maurder's didn't get enough page time in my opinion, but when they did take over the scenes it was enjoyable.

Though one character that had no purpose in this book was the "main villain." I put this in quotes because until the last 50 or so pages of the book you have no clue who this character is or what the motivations are. Honestly, I'm still not sure what the motivations were. I joked with Audris that our villain needs to hang out with the other wasted Marvel villains, because wow what a letdown. Because we had so many pages dedicated to the Andi/Dex stuff described above, we actually didn't any time to fully understand what the threat was and what the significance of the threat taking over was. Also, there was a particular weapon introduced that sounded pretty important and for the life of me, I cannot tell you what this item was or what it did. It's a shame because it played a pretty big role in the climax.

There is a twist in this book and wow it was anticlimactic. You'll either be scratching your head to figure out where the hell it came from or figure it out about 50 pages before the reveal. Yeah, it was clearly setting up the threat for the sequel, but it could have been done better.

Oh and the POVs were fine. Having more than one really worked during some parts of the book were didn't add much in other parts. There are also some flashback scenes noted by italicized text. Listening to the audiobook, it was hard to figure out what was and wasn't flashback without following along, but that's just a small nitpick.

More reviews like this one are available on my blog: coffeecocktailsandbooks.com/reviews/

Oooh is this series gonna be good! Zenith is action packed, no holds barred, never stops book. I can already see what the next one will be about and I can't wait!

Hello Book Dragons. 

I am here today to talk to you about my latest read. I was lucky enough to get an ARC of Zenith thanks to NetGalley. And boy, am I glad I got this book early. Now Zenith was co-written by Sasha Alsberg with the murder Complex author Lindsay Cummings.



Most know Androma Racella as the Bloody Baroness, a powerful mercenary whose reign of terror stretches across the Mirabel Galaxy. To those aboard her glass starship, Marauder, however, she's just Andi, their friend and fearless leader.

But when a routine mission goes awry, the Marauder's all-girl crew is tested as they find themselves in a treacherous situation and at the mercy of a sadistic bounty hunter from Andi's past.

Meanwhile, across the galaxy, a ruthless ruler waits in the shadows of the planet Xen Ptera, biding her time to exact revenge for the destruction of her people. The pieces of her deadly plan are about to fall into place, unleashing a plot that will tear Mirabel in two.

Andi and her crew embark on a dangerous, soul-testing journey that could restore order to their shipor just as easily start a war that will devour worlds. As the Marauder hurtles toward the unknown, and Mirabel hangs in the balance, the only certainty is that in a galaxy run on lies and illusion, no one can be trusted.



Now this book was a great start to a new series for the YA world. Now I will say that in the start it did feel a bit info-dumpy but that is to be expected with the first book in a new series. We have to get caught up on what is going on. Besides that, i really have no complaints about this book. It was a good read. I could have read it faster with a physical copy but i am still really happy with the fact that I was given this book early. 

So questions? Will I be reading the second book in this series? Yes, i will. I want to support Sahas and Lindsay in this series. I think they are both wonderful people who have created a world that can only get better from here. 

I know this isn't a very long and in-depth review but this book is still very new and i don't want to ruin the experience of this read i am going to keep it more of an overview. 

So till next time here at the nook!

E. 

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Zenith was a novel that I wasn't sure if I was going to read because it wasn't a storyline that typically captured my attention but I was tempted because I have been a huge fan of Sasha's channel for years. That being said, this review isn't swayed by that fact, I'm still going to deliver my honest thoughts. Upon first reading it (note: I did not read the short version published earlier), I was actually really in love with the story.

Everything felt incredibly fast paced and I generally really liked the characters and the world. Then, came the processing period, the time that comes after finishing a novel where I try to gather my thoughts. I flipped back through the novel for some reference points and in that process came to some realizations that I hadn't noticed before.

So the obvious thing is that this novel is written by two authors which mean two different writing styles. While I haven't read anything by Lindsay Cummings and this is Sasha's "debut," I noticed a couple of discrepancies with the writing style that make it very clear that this novel was written by two people. While that may seem like stating the obvious, with these moments, the story itself didn't flow as well as it could have which affected the impact the plot was aiming to achieve.

Jumping into the world - Zenith is a space odyssey and while I'm not a huge fan of space-centered plots, I did enjoy the descriptions, the first couple of times. There are several passages that seem overly repetitive which added to the overall length of the novel. As I was reading this on my Kindle, I didn't know that the entire novel was 544 pages until I checked Goodreads. For me, this can be both a good or bad point - I was able to lose myself in the story enough that it didn't feel like it was dragging, but there were a lot of moments that could have condensed if not for these repetitions.

In addition to the world, Zenith brings to life a wide cast of characters that are honestly just so lovable. I admired Androma's strength at times but felt that she could have grown more of a backbone. I loved the rest of the crew, and how the authors created such an awesome group of fearless heroines. Dex was a headache at times but you can't help but love him. And Valen...oh Valen...I have no words.

I feel like this review goes back and forth but that's honestly just how my thoughts are towards Zenith. I did enjoy reading through the novel, but going back, I'm noticing things that I didn't pick up on before that would typically have bothered me so my verdict is left kind of hanging. I do believe this will be an exciting series and I'm interested to see how it continues.

This is a Sci-Fi story so of course I was excited for it instantly. And it didn't disappoint. I really fell in love with all of the characters and think they are the best part of this book. Each have incredible personalities and backgrounds that I really enjoyed learning more about. The story was really entertaining and though I don't normally care for multiple points of view I ended up enjoying most of them. The only thing that stopped me from making this 5 stars was just how long it is. There were multiple moments where I felt like what I was reading wasn't necessary to have included so it just felt really long at times. Other than that though I absolutely loved it and can't wait for the next book.