Was this really 500 pages? I feel like I flew through it! I am really surprised at how much I enjoyed this book and how much I liked Grace (our heroine) and I loved how smart she was (astrophysicist) and she is full of facts that were interesting and I actually learned from the book (which is always a plus!)
What I enjoyed most about this book, is that its characters are people. They could be people we run into on a daily basis.
Yes this story is about Grace's mom disappearence which in all honestly helps the plot and helps Grace exam her relationship with her mother and her father. Its not a thriller in the sense of Grace hunting down what happened to her mother in a unrealastic fashion, but more how she interacts and grows from this.
This was one of the best YA drama's that I have read in a while.

Thank you NetGallew and kidscanpress for the opportunity to read this arc!

A book with a MC who is an aspiring astronomer? Count me in! This is a book about family, and uncertainty, and yes, astronomy. I appreciated how much of a role astronomy played in the book and I hope it could make readers love astronomy (even if they are not into science - it is amazing, I promise!) I might be biased here but this is just the kind of a book I want to see in libraries and on my bookshelf, too.

I’ll be honest, I don’t know as much about astronomy as I probably should. But, I thought this book sounded interesting for the mystery surrounding the disappearance of the main character’s mother. Unfortunately, I really struggled to push through this book. There was a whole lot of astronomy talk, much more than I expected. I had a really hard time connecting with Grace, and really did not see her romance with Mylo. The best part of the book I think was the relationship between mother and daughter, and the changes in Grace that we do see throughout the book. If you like astronomy a lot, you will probably enjoy this one.

* ARC provided by NetGalley and the publisher in exchange for an honest review.

"The Center of the Universe" by Ria Voros can be summarised as a book about a seventeen-year-old geeky girl with some OCD and her tv personality mother but that would be a huge disservice. I did not expect to find characters so well developed, people that you could very well meet on your everyday lives, with problems that you and your relatives face every day since fights with your parents, dealing with relatives or navigating school life and crushes. With the exception of the first chapter, this is a book that takes it time and we can only be happy for it. Throughout the first part of the book, the chapters are not in chronological order which makes it even more interesting by divulging a few details while making us come up with a lot more questions that only make us read more furiously in order to uncover the mystery.
Because Grace is a keen astronomer, whenever the characters found themselves discussing it, the details were so well researched that I felt part of the conversation too, almost like I was in the same universe as them
I also liked the way Grace's relationship with her father was portrayed, with him being a kind mean, interested in his daughter's lives that talked to her without ignoring her intelligence and input. In YA books, romantic entanglements normally take a big part of the book and I was happy that this did not happen here, with Grace's romantic relationship taking her time, without having the need to make a hero out of the boy but instead giving him a personality and a reason to be in the book other than kissing the main character.
Lastly, I was just so happy that 1. there is a Portuguese character in the book and 2. Dr Elizabeth Tasker, someone Grace looks up to in the book, is a real person!
Ria Voros created an amazing story.

I’d first like to thank @netgalley and @kidscanpress / @kcploft for the opportunity to read this ARC. My review is my own thoughts and feelings.
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The reason I requested this book was the description but also the cover. It pulled me in because I’m a nerd who loves space.
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This is a story about Grace Carter. She’s 17 and obsessed with space. She wants to become an astrophysicist someday.
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One Saturday morning she is at her brothers soccer game with her friends and family. Her mom, GG Carter- famous journalist, steps away to take a work call and then never returns. Will they find her? Should they abandon all hope?
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The rest of the story is how everyone deals with GG’s disappearance. You see Grace’s relationships change with each character in the story. You learn a lot about space and time. You see how different people react to trauma and how they handle the Perpetual Waiting Room.
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I really seriously enjoyed this and I think I’ll be rereading it in the future. The reason I did 4 stars instead of 5 is that it felt a little drawn out at times. Do not let that deter you from this brilliant book though, especially if you’re a science nerd like me ☺️

Definitely for a YA audience.
I liked the premise of a kidnapping/missing person and mother/daughter issues. However, i didn't really care much about ANY of the characters.
I received an ARC from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review

I want to thank Netgalley for providing me an Arc of this book in exchange for my honest review.

I really enjoyed this book.
It centres around our main character grace who’s mother suddenly disappears and they have to try and figure out as a family what happened.

There was so much mystery in this book I was on the edge of my seat for a lot of it!
I love how the writing flowed and made it a really fast, addictive read.
I gave it 4 stars.

4 out of 5 stars.

"Sometimes it’s easier to think about things through natural phenomena, you know?”

Thank you to NetGalley for the earc!
The astrophysics references were cute.

Let me start off by saying that I loved the narration on this. It’s first person narration, by Grace, our main character. I’m no longer a teenager, but I’m only twenty-two, so I feel like I haven’t forgotten what it’s like to be a teen and be exasperated by your parents. I thought that was done extremely well. It was young, but not too young. Grace got angry sometimes and was annoyed a lot, but clearly loved her parents. Seventeen year olds make bad decisions sometimes, but I feel like the characters had good heads on their shoulders and made decent decisions (for the most part) and didn’t come off as too young or too old.

The biggest problem I had was character introductions. People would be introduced, and then I would be confused as to how the main character knew them. For example, Marge Wilson. Her dad says “We’re going to stay at Marge Wilson’s.”, and it takes too long to figure out what their relation to Marge Wilson is.

Also, the story took too long to mention what her dad does. I feel like the characterization of the mother and grandmother was so heavy, that the dad kind of fell to the side. Which isn’t great, because Grace is supposedly much closer to her dad than her mom.

So, the big mystery behind this book was that her mom was missing. I thought that was done pretty well.
It’s not a thriller in the sense that Grace herself is trying to figure out a crime, but rather that she is confronting her relationship with her mother, and what her mother used to be like versus what she’s like now. I like that a lot. Sometimes it’s hard to imagine that our parents had completely different lives before us, and it’s strange to see what their lives used to be like. I loved that, and I loved the relationships that Grace has with her friends as well.

This was an interesting read. The mystery of GG's disappearance didn't make this story the typical YA Mystery/Thriller kind of story. In fact, while it did revolve around the disappearance, it also really focused on Grace's personal life, how she is as a person, how she is dealing with not only the absence of her mother but also other relationships outside of it, all while incorporating Grace's love for astronomy. I would say that the story had a balance between Grace dealing with her mother/disappearance and with her own personal issues.

Although this story had a pretty good premise, I wasn't the biggest fan of Grace. She wasn't a horrible MC, but she has proven to have a bit of an attitude, especially with adults. Granted, she is a teen and is dealing with mommy issues (before, during, and after the whole situation), but the way she confronted adults sometimes made me annoyed of her. Thankfully she does change for the better and has become a better version of her past self (or whatever she was at the beginning of the book). Unlike other YA mysteries where the MC is constantly chasing the mystery, Grace did not do that, at least for the most part and if she did she approached it in a safe manner. This is mostly why the story wasn't 100% focused on GG's disappearance. This concept doesn't happen very often, but I guess it's interesting.

Overall, this was a pretty good read. However, since I do prefer mysteries over romances and other teen dramas, I probably didn't enjoy the story to its full potential because of this. Though if you're interested in mysteries as I am, I would say this is still a pretty solid read.

I kinda enjoyed this book. I liked that for once the main protagonist is smart but why couldnt she be likeable too. Actually no one in this book was likeable at all. I feel like I read a book that was trying to be real and relatable but a book should also have someone your rooting for and this book I could care less what happens to anyone. It couldn't have been good.

This books broke me, put me back together, and then proceeded to break me over and over again. It's been a while since I've read something so hard hitting that I couldn't stop crying every second I was reading it.

Except for the amazing writing, there also was an incredible storyline. Family bonds, mother-daughter relationships, astrophysics and cute friendship and romance bonds are all in this book and there's no way someone could not like this