I love coming of age young adult novels. This was such a good read, I’ll for sure be reading more by this author.

This book was a slow starter for me, but it paid off! I really enjoyed it. I was slow at times and requires a bit of a commitment to fully invest in, but I would still recommend this to a friend! 3/5 stars for me!

I really wanted to like this book. The synopsis held so much promise, but the book failed to deliver as much as I hoped for from it. I enjoyed it well enough, but with a few tweaks it could have been an even more enjoyable read.

I actually really enjoyed this book. First of all the cover is really pretty and catches the reader’s eye. I enjoyed how this book showed the highs and lows of being in the eye of the media. The characters were all enjoyable. I like the relationship between Grace and the different characters. It was nice to see her connect with her mom at the end as well. I also liked how the author used some technical astronomy terms, but not too many that it was hard to understand. The plot was good and I enjoyed it.
The only things I didn’t like about this book were that it felt a little drawn out in spots it didn’t need to be. Her mom was gone for a really long time and some of the scenes could have been cut out. The whole relationship with GG and her kidnapper was also a little confusing at some parts.
Overall, I liked this book and would recommend it to contemporary and young adult readers.

This book definitely didn't feel like a 500 page book, it had a nice flow and it was an interesting look at how a family is left in limbo after the disappearance of a loved one. Grace's mother sends a text one day saying that she isn't coming home and Grace, and her family's world is thrown into turmoil. Was she abducted? Did she just leave? What happened to the infamous GG Carter? This story takes place over the months this mystery unfolds and explores the relationships of the family, Grace and her friends and a developing romance with Mylo, a boy who understands what it's like to have a MIA parent. I liked the use of star imagery throughout this book and I felt as if this book was a nice entrance for contemporary fans to meet the mystery genre. My main hang up with this book and why it's not a 5 star rating, is because I found Grace intolerable a lot of the time. I think she's hard wired and difficult unnecessarily at times and it really threw off my experience with this story. I did really like Iris however, and the side characters really made this story for me.

"The Center of the Universe" was good. It had a slow start. but it was a good suspenseful book and I thought that it was well written.

Thank you Netgalley for a free copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

This book just flew by. I'm not gonna lie normally I get hung up on the page count of a book but this book was so interesting I didn't really notice it was 500. If your expecting a book where the main focus in a mystery then I don't know if this book is for you. While there is a mystery involved, the book was more about relationships and how to grow into your own person. I really enjoyed this read.

I had a hard time putting my thoughts together for this review. There is so much I loved about the characters and the story, but I just felt like something was missing, like part of the story wasn’t fully told. I don’t really know how to explain it, but I’ll try.

If you are at all familiar with my reviews, you know that characters are what drive me. I love character development and the connections that are formed between characters. I like them to be deep and nuanced. And while we get to see inside the main character, Grace’s mind, I wanted more depth in some of her relationships.

Everything centers around Grace and her reactions to her mother’s disappearance, as well as her interactions with her family and friends. While I think the author did a good job with the relationships between Grace and her dad, grandmother, and brother, there are three relationships that I would have liked to have more depth.

Grace’s relationship with her best friend, Iris, is good and quite realistic. This relationship is a little deeper than the other two, but there are a couple of incidents that are kept at the surface level, and I would have just liked to see a little more.

Then there’s Grace’s relationship with her mom, which is pivotal to the story. They have a complicated relationship that in some ways reminded me of my own relationship with my mother. And I think it’s because of that, I felt that there was something missing. I completely understood Grace’s anger, frustration, and confusion, I just thought she should have been more hurt. But maybe I’m just projecting.

The final relationship is between Grace and Mylo. It’s hard for me to talk about this relationship without spoilers, so I’m going to be very vague, sorry. The bond and closeness between Mylo and Grace grows throughout the story, and we hear a lot about Grace’s physical responses to Mylo, but not as much as her emotional responses. While I understand that their relationship is not the focus of the story, I felt like getting more of Graces feelings would have added more layers to her character.

While it may seem like my desire for more out of this book means that I didn’t enjoy it, that is really not the case. While I maybe question some of GG’s {Grace’s mother} motivations, I really liked the story and the characters, I just wanted to go a little deeper into the workings of Grace’s heart and mind.

Disclaimer: I received an eARC of this book through Net Galley and the publishers {Kids Can Press} in exchange for an honest review. All thoughts and opinions are my own.

This book took me a few chapters to get settled into, since the first few chapters jump around in time rather frequently and the jumps were rather hard to follow early on. After that, however, things evened out and the transitions grew smoother. Once I got settled in, I loved Grace's character voice. She's observant and thoughtful, and her interests and the way her brain works are super cool and come through clearly in the book's prose.

This book does move faster than the average contemporary, since it's blended with the action of trying to figure out what happened to GG, but there were enough slow moments to mostly balance it out for me. Though I generally prefer more laid-back contemporaries, the pacing of this book was well-suited to the story and I didn't have a problem with it.

I really enjoyed all of the characters in this book. Grace's voice was engaging, and I loved her relationships with her dad and brother (I kind of wish we'd gotten to see more of that). Her passion for astronomy is awesome, and I loved seeing her steadily pursue that throughout the book.

Iris was probably my favorite character. She's fun and loyal, as well as self-motivated and entrepreneurial. And it was awesome to see a homeschooler who was passionate about her education and also just treated as... normal. Though she might have tended toward the positive homeschool stereotype of always motivated and almost hyper-normal (homeschoolers are normally at least a little weird/counter-cultural), it was nice to not see the more negative stereotype. I'd love to see more homeschooled characters like this in fiction.

Mylo was also awesome. His conversations with Grace while she was overwhelmed were super sweet, and I loved the dynamic between the two of them.

And did I mention the dad and brother? I'm so happy with the positive family dynamics in this book, and my only disappointment is that we didn't get to see more of the sibling or father-daughter dynamics. The dad is awesome, doing his best to support his family while also struggling himself, trying to find his wife... He was just a super strong guy and awesome dad. And Charlie (the brother) was such a realistic younger brother. He was so sweet, but also had his moments of being difficult, and he would go back and forth between asking Grace to spend time with him and pretending he was annoyed to be related to her. He was great.

There was one brief, fade-to-black love scene that I thought unnecessary and forced, and I seem to recall there was mild language throughout, but otherwise I thought everything was handled well as far as content is concerned.

Overall, I really enjoyed this book.

The writing was beautiful and the plot was intriguing. The relationship however is what stopped me from really enjoying this. The characters were average and really nothing special.

After this and one other YA book, I have stopped requesting YA contemporary books. I tend to find them boring or a bit young. Like the other YA book, I found the MC a little self-centered and young. I think this book would be great for some but was not for me. Also, while the descriptions started strong, this books did not need to be 500 pages.

I enjoyed this book a decent amount! The writing style was really wonderful, and the story was interesting and unique. I didn't buy Grace and Mylo's relationship, though, which was honestly my main gripe with the book. I'd definitely read more of Ria Voros's work in the future!

Thank you to Netgalley and KCP Loft for a free copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. All thoughts and feelings are my own.

I’ll admit, I stalk reviews for books before I read them. I like to know what I’m getting into. I used to be scared that they influenced me into liking or not liking something I normally would. I read so many 5 star reviews for this book, but it just fell flat for me.

Gracie, the main character, was somewhat flat to me. A lot of people said she was relateable because she was normal. Sure, she was normal, but there wasn’t anything special about her. And I’m not talking about powers, or being super pretty, or anything like that. Just, nothing sticks out to me about her. I thought her best friend, Iris, and her boyfriend, Mylo, were way more interesting. I think Mylo should have his own book, but I won’t tell you why because ~spoilers~.

The Center of the Universe takes place in Canada and is written by a Canadian author, which I think is awesome! This past year I have become really good friends with some Canadians in Words & Whimsy. It was nice to read a story set in their lands! I think this is the first book set in Canada I’ve ever read.

So a little about this book. It’s 506 pages. It has 100 chapters. It’s a little intimidating. I mean, the chapters are short, which is great since I like to stop reading at the end of a chapter. However, some chapters were only half a page or so long, and I couldn’t really find a reason for them being there. There were also 7 space analogies in chapter 1. Yes, I counted. Yes, I thought it was a little much. Like, I understand this is a space book. I promise. That did get better throughout the book. There were less, but I still didn’t really understand them since I don’t know much about space.

However, there were some great things about this book! It did not read like a normal 500-pager. It was a quick read. I loved the mystery of why her mom was abducted. Or did she go voluntarily? Some of the descriptions were so.beautiful. Like this one –

“Mylo talked into my ear, his voice rolling and pitching like a sea made of sound…”

It’s so beautiful and romantic! Also, this book features a real astrophysicist, Dr. Elizabeth Tasker. There is even a Q&A with her in the back of the book! I love that it brought in a real astrophysicist.

So, this book got 3.5 stars from me. I felt there were a few too many space references when other things could be used. However, it was a quick read with a great mystery! I’d recommend it to anyone who likes ya mysteries and especially anyone who loves space!

It's definitely a cute read. The friendship in the book is absolutely adorable. It's a heartwarming friendship between the two characters.

This was my first book by this author, It was pretty enjoyable. I would give this book a 3.5 star rating! It was a pretty Quick and easy read!

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for allowing me to read an e-ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review.
I enjoyed this book. I enjoyed the space related aspects, I liked the friendship between Grace and Iris, and the bond between Grace and Mylo. I also enjoyed the bond that was slowly built between Iris and her Grandmother. The only thing that frustrated me about this book was details being left out, when, as a reader, you want answers. This book dealt with a few different issues which made it more 3-dimensional, instead of being a messy overload of topics.

This was actually the first book NetGalley book that I didn't finish and I'm surprised. By the blurb, I was really interested because I love a good mystery especially if it's young adult, however when I scrolled through and saw that there are a hundred chapters on my Kindle reader I was like, wait...hold up. I've read a few books with over a hundred chapters so stuck through but thirty chapters in and I just couldn't find myself to continue further.

At first I found the writing beautiful and very descriptive to a point where I wished I wrote like that but now I know what they mean when they say, don't describe too much...it gets boring. The author brought up stuff that wasn't necessary and took long to get to the point of each chapter or brought new information in that I thought might be valid but ended up being wasteful.

The main character wasn't the best either. She's rude and selfish toward her mother and predictably when her mother disappears she thinks back to how her mother must've felt, only when someone else pointed it out. Everything seemed to be on her while the surrounding characters were all two-dimensional. They just carried on with their lives and waited for their mother to be found. It took a while for something to happen I'm assuming.

What appears to be a mother simply abandoning her daughter, turns into something more in this cleverly written story of a teen and her mother at odds, and her father stuck in the middle.

While most just think it is ok to write it off as abandonment, Grace is not ready to abandon her mother just because she hasn't been there for her, growing up. She suspects that there is more going on and so uses sleuthing to figure out what really happened.

Good book. And the astronomy is real and interesting as well.

Thanks to Netgalley for making this book available for an honest review.

Read this in one sitting, just couldn’t put it down. I loved how it was about the relationship between mothers and daughters and told through our character Grace. I think this was marketed as a mystery although i did figure it all out pretty quickly but it in no way takes away from such a wonderful boom.

In the end this was a satisfying read. It began slow, I almost gave up on it, but once the story started moving it really moved. This is a story about relationships, between friends, between parents and children, even between one’s self and the world. I can see this as a teen “beach read”. Thank you to Netgalley for the chance to read it. #netgalley #yareads #beachread