This dystopian fiction shows money shows a future of worse economic disparity.

Ever since Vika Hale was a child, she had an unknown benefactor that paid for her and her sister's education and ran her through a variety of physical and psychological tests. These allow Vika to dream of a life where she no longer lived on an economically and emotionally poor planet and instead lived on its cousin with the rich people. Suddenly, she is given a choice to do just that; give up working at a bar to marry the richest man on the two planets. But she cannot decide if she wants to sell herself or if the money is worth her morality. But her life shifts again as her betrothed is killed. Soon she finds herself part of a plot against the family because the next heir has included her in their life.

I liked that the author took instalove love and gave it a twist. It isn't the main character who falls head over heels. Instead, the instalove is flipped on its head and was made into a male character. I do have to say I don't understand the instant love in this incident but maybe it's because the woman is more complex and not some kind of angel. I was just happy Vika wasn't starry-eyed over some man.

I called the answer of the “who dun it” pretty early in the book. But Cristin Terrill feeds red herring after red herring along the way. Because of this, I didn't see the biggest twist coming I always love a good surprise. The novel needs that twist to really stand out in the world of YA Dystopia, especially those dealing with economic differences.

I really enjoyed that the characters were able to put economic status aside to solve the mystery. It is quite clear that while the poor planet will get the brunt of the danger, the more affluent planet would also suffer as well. And it's not easy for Vika who has moved up in the world.. Her home planet treats her shoddily, and the citizens don't trust her even though all she wants is to save the places and people she loves.

The Stars Between is a new take on the betrothed story with a stunning twist.

The Stars Between Us is a young adult science fiction novel with elements of romance and mystery.
Vika (Viktoria) Hale is a bar waitress on a miserable polluted planet when she is suddenly named in a rich man’s will. She’ll have to marry his son Leo Capin (whom she has never met) but she and her family will be assured a life of luxury and comfort. But Leo is killed in a rebel attack before they have a chance to meet and she thinks her dreams are over when the new heirs (the former Capin domestic help, Hal and Mira) invite her to their planet for an extended visit. For the first time since she was a child she has clean air, good food and beautiful clothes and Vika decides that finding another rich fiancée might solve all her problems. But she finds herself distracted by the attentions of Hal’s assistant Sky, a young man whose awkwardness sets her on edge and the handsome family solicitor Archer. Soon another deadly attack targeting her and the new heirs has her investigating who else would benefit from their deaths. As she delves further into the mystery cracks start appearing in the Cinderella lifestyle of her, Hal and Mira and she questions if she can follow through with her plan to find a rich husband.
I really enjoyed this mystery romance set in a science fiction setting. Vika wasn’t your typical too perfect YA heroine but was pretty realistic about how money could benefit her and her family and get her off the planet. I also liked how Sky wasn’t the obvious leading man and most of the time his friend Ariel got to be the actual hero (note: Ariel needs her own book). There were a few things I found unlikely with some of the character’s double-lives and secret identities but did enjoy watching money change the arc of Hal’s character.
Overall, this was an entertaining mystery and romance with a science fiction setting that is appropriate for all ages. It also has a solid message about wealth and privilege and staying true to your own values.
4 stars ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

This was pitched as Bridgerton in a science fiction world and I can see that. It was definitely a science fiction meets a romcom which is always fun. I thought this was engaging and fast paced but I didn't love the main characters which makes it hard to enjoy the overall book.

This book was so incredible. It was packed full of fantasy, mystery, and so much more. I was on the edge of my seat page after page. I never wanted to put this book down. I loved following Vika's story. The concept for this world and the story was very unique and interesting. It captured my attention quickly, and it held on through the whole story. The fact that the person her took care of her and her sisters that she never knew had been a billionaire that died under suspicious circumstances gave me a bit of a Clue or Knives out feels for a bit. It was so intense when she nearly died and realized that the will's heirs were being hunted down. I genuinely could rave about this story so much. Thank you NetGalley for an arc of this story.

The Stars Between Us is the perfect book for new sci-fi fans.

I wasn’t expecting much from this based on the synopsis and reviews, and I’m glad. This is the perfect book for newer YA readers, or more romance based sci-fi/fantasy lovers. I’m not either of those groups.

I did enjoy the worldbuilding, and it felt very similar to Red Queen, which made it easy to understand. The travel, dystopian world and characters all feel very young compared to the plot of the book, but it’s definitely great for getting back into the world of sci-fi.

The one thing that I didn’t enjoy as much as I hoped was the actual plot. The amount of insane plot twists kept building and building and the ending was nice, but it felt very bland compared to everything that happened mere pages before. There were some twists that I felt could’ve been left out, and were simply added to create more of a build up.

That being said, I do love books where the guy falls first, and this is one of them. Vika, Sky, Archer and the rest of the characters are all very well developed, and it’s safe to say that one of them carried the book more than others.

Overall, this was a super fun read. Thank you NetGalley, Wednesday Books and the author for allowing me to read an advanced copy in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own.

Eighteen year old Vika lives on one of two sister planets - hers being the one full of laborers, pollution and poverty that supports the wealthier other. After years of struggling to help keep her family comfortable and afloat, she discovers that she was named in a wealthy businessman’s will to gain a fortune if she marries his son - someone she has never met before. But just as this news sinks in and Vika is warming to the idea of having some financial means, plans are thrown out the window.

The Stars Between Us follows Vika as she tries to balance what it is to have wealth and still stay grounded. How to trust when you are not sure who to trust. Who to love when you are not sure of motives. And how to stay true to yourself. I enjoyed this novel but wasn’t instantly drawn into the characters and setting. Having this story take place on fictional planets is interesting but not defining. The love interest is a roller coaster of yes, no & maybes and at times felt choppy. But overall a decent read if you like a slow burn where you can root for the underdog. 3 stars.

Review based on an Uncorrected Digital Galley from Wednesday Books and NetGalley. Thank you!

This was the first book I’ve read from this author and while I tend to love YA books, this one felt more like a children’s book with a little bit of romance tossed in. And while I’m not a huge fan of science fiction books, I at least expect some twists and turns and I didn’t feel like I got very many of them with Vika’s story.

And speaking of Vika, I wasn’t a big fan of hers. I found her to be juvenile, spoiled, and immature throughout most of the story with a lackluster character arc. The blurb had me thinking we’d get this extravagant, thrilling story but instead I found myself rolling my eyes at the FMC and wondering when the slow moving story would end.

I mean, it’s not HORRIBLE, but it’s a bit too childish and bland for someone like me.

When I first picked up The Stars Between Us, I didn’t really expect to enjoy it as much as I did.I think in a very general sense I would classify this book as charismatic. It’s not groundbreaking or surprising in any way, nor is its language poetic or particularly extravagant. Put simply, it is an easy read with an interesting and entertaining plot. I can’t really ask for anything more than that.
I don’t want to give the impression that this novel is amateur by any grace of the word. It isn’t, it is still a space opera after all. The world building is complex, the characters are well thought out, and the story is dynamic. However, it is predictable. That doesn’t make it bad, it just thrusts the focus of the narrative more on the actions taken as opposed to Vika and the gang unravelling things from an intellectual perspective. In that regard, it does make The Stars Between Us feel very “teen” as opposed to a novel that can cross demographics. As someone who reads teen, young adult, and adult fiction—The Stars Between Us felt firmly settled in the realm of teen romance drama a la The Vampire Diaries and Beautiful Creatures.
Ultimately, I did like this and I will definitely be recommending it to anyone looking for something simple, with a heavy focus on likeable characters, but that’s still scifi.

Definitely written with a younger target audience than me, this was still a very good story. Mystery from page 1 that winds throughout the whole book, setting a back story that will see the main characters go from rags to riches with all that includes. As they grow and mature, the story evolves into a much richer reading experience. This is a great book for a younger (12-15) yr old reader looking to move into a more adult read.

Growing up on a second-tier planet plagued with pollution and economic depression, and having to work in a bar to help support her family, Viktoria Hale knows poverty and need. She’s wanted for so long to escape to a better place, to better living conditions, if it’s just to the cleaner and richer planet just next to hers. Then she learns that the mysterious benefactor who paid for her and her sister to have a good education, at least, was a billionaire. When he died, his will stipulated that his estranged son, educated on a distant planet and not seen for years, marry her to qualify to inherit his billions.

But Leo Chapin is killed en route to meet Vika on Philomenis, and that leaves her back at square one — until the next people in line for the fortune, a kind older couple, invite her to live with them on Ploutos. Suddenly, Vika is thrust into a completely different life, with riches beyond her imagining.

Her life and future aren’t completely sure, though, and Vika ends up feeling she may have to marry someone she doesn’t care for after all to solidify her security and that of her family. But then she starts having to worry about her safety and that of the couple with whom she lives when an explosion rocks an aircraft they are on. Signs seem to be pointing to someone trying to get rid of more beneficiaries of the inheritance, but it’s a mystery who the culprit could be.

Vika finds herself having to turn to the one person she doesn’t like at all but who is in a position to help her: Sky Foster, the assistant to her guardians. Something about him seems a little off, and she hasn’t been able to really trust him. But as they work together to investigate the truth, she starts finding he isn’t as bad as she thinks.

The Stars Between Us is set where space travel is possible and there are other advanced technologies, but it’s not crucial to the essential plot. It could be set at pretty much any time and place. Two young people find out what’s most important to them, and find each other. They face difficult choices and danger.

I enjoyed this young adult science fiction book and found myself rooting for our heroine, who is tough and more than a little jaded by what she’s gone through. The setting was a bonus, since space stories tend to hook me (oh, you know, Skyward, Illuminae,These Broken Stars…). Now I’ll go back and read some of the author’s other books, one of which I already had on my to-read list from a while back!

3.5 Stars

**Special thanks to NetGalley and St. Martin’s Press/ Wednesday Books for sharing this digital reviewer copy with me in exchange for my honest opinions.**

Bridgerton + Sci-Fi + RomCom = The Star Between Us

Vika Hale: Poor bartender, estranged from her mother and sister, and raised with the help of a wealthy benefactor. She's summoned to Ploutos for the reading of the Will of said benefactor - who died under very suspicious circumstances. To her surprise, she's mentioned in the Will. Now a part of High Society, she has to find a proper candidate to marry.

Their relationship goes towards more "instalove" - if that is not something you enjoy, I would take that into account. I do wish we had a little more between the two before they "fell in love"

There were times I couldn't really connect with the FMC, I found her to be annoying. Although there was some character growth, it made it a little hard to read at times. With that said, overall, I enjoyed the culmination of the different genres and the romance was sweet.

Oof.

I'll start off by saying that the writing is fine. It isn't spectacular (not to mention that there are pretty massive issues with pacing e.g. where the narrative essentially stops to describe the details of something related to the uberwealthy, Crazy Rich Asians style, or when it takes 400 pages for what feels like a very minimal story, lacking much major action) but it's fine. The world-building, however, is incredibly lackluster; the plot/mystery telegraphs a lot of its "twists" and leaves quite a lot to be desired; and the vast majority of the characters are either completely insufferable (Vika, Hal, Lavinia, Mrs. Hale) or saintly and spineless (Sky, Mira, Mr. Hale) and the relationships between them border on the absurd, such that Vika's hatred for Sky feels more realistic than his inexplicable instalove for her and I kept expecting Hal and Mira to poison Vika, considering the absolute madness of the alternative i.e. them meeting her for one (1) minute and being so taken with her obnoxious self that they decided to have her become their EXTREMELY well-supported ward.

Honestly, this should have been marketed as an early YA book and focused on Ariel and perhaps the PLF - it would have been far preferable to and more interesting than listening to everyone's repeated assurances to Vika that she isn't selfish for saying "so long, suckers" to her whole planet and going to Daisy Buchanan it on her own (and without even any catty rich girls snickering at her behind her back for being even less than nouveau riche).

This was an interesting read that grabbed me right from the start. I found Vika a bit frustrating and insufferable at times but I did end up liking her in the end. Sky was a complex character that I'm glad we got to know through the book with his POV as well. I really liked the supporting characters. I think they really rounded out the story and flushed out the odd, different world and the system of both the ones in power and those that weren't. I didn't think the mystery took quite the center stage I would have liked because the middle section definitely felt more romance and less mystery. But I did like the end, how it all wrapped up. Good story, I liked it!

A huge thank you to the author and publisher for providing an e-ARC via Netgalley. This does not affect my opinion regarding the book.

I’d say this is more a 3.5 but it gets an extra half for being based in space. I think my favorite part of this whole book was how the story ends with the two main characters. A fresh start - something that even if everything hadn’t gone wrong to begin with they may not have gotten. Their story was sweet and frustrating and a little bit nerve wracking at times.

I will say that the main character wasn’t necessarily one of my favorite characters of the book and not because of how she acted once she was living a more financially stable life which would seem like the reason to not like her. The writing for her character seemed a bit chaotic and all over the place while other characters were written with a fairly stable storyline - it felt a bit disjointed.

The overall pacing was decent for the length of the book and I genuinely found myself enjoying the story.

When I heard the words “sci-fi” and “Dickens retelling” I knew I had to read this new YA release! Thank you to NetGalley and Wednesday Books for passing it my way.

Although I feel like the sci-fi elements only half worked, I was pleasantly surprised by THE STARS BETWEEN US. I’m not sure if the Dickens elements will work for either YA fantasy fans or Dickens die-hards, but I think for a YA book it does a credible job in retelling this particular story. Yes, it’s missing a wide cast of lovable side characters and Dickens’ signature humor, but in my mind it’s kept the most important focuses: class commentary and character growth.

Vika is at times a very frustrating main character but we get to see her grow and mature over time. I read the book in two sittings and the writing was very easy to get into. Adding a murder mystery plot really made things snappy.

I wish the sci-fi world-building had been a bit richer but it’s still an entertaining window-dressing for a classic story.

Trigger/content warnings: bombs/explosion violence, class inequality/discrimination, sexism.

4.5/5 stars
Recommended for people who like: multiple POVs, dystopian, sci-fi, rags-to-riches, whodunnit, scheming, This Shattered World

This review has been posted to Goodreads as of 3/20 and has been posted to Instagram as of 3/23 and my review blog as of 4/5.

This book has a dual dystopian/sci-fi thing going on where it takes place on two sister worlds, one of which is run-down, poor, and has some dystopic stuff going, and the other which is developed, rich, and has some more sci-fi elements. The dystopian stuff is pretty light and isn't really the center of the story, more just the backdrop for the other things that are going on.

The difference between the two worlds is really what sets up the main 'theme' of the story. Terrill definitely goes all-in on this one about wealth, prosperity, the way it's misappropriated, and the things it can do to people. The difference between the sister planets is distinct and on purpose. The story is about what happens when some people have gross amounts of wealth and distribute it very selectively/to only a few people. Honestly, I think the premise is good. Is Terrill a bit heavy-handed in her messaging?...yes. It was very, very obvious what she was going for here and, while I do think there needs to be a conversation about that kind of excess, I'm not one for being hit over the head with a message or told what to believe.

There's a secondary theme to the story that I feel gets kind of glossed over in favor of the wealth one, and that's the idea of autonomy and treating people like commodities. The MC, Vika, is essentially tapped by a billionaire for something specific and then proceeds to have other people throughout the story try and use her in similar or different ways. It's a big thing at the beginning of the book, and it is something that Vika continues to bring up throughout the story, but I don't think it gets the attention it should've in the way it should've.

As for Vika herself. As several reviewers have already stated, Vika is not exactly a likeable character. She's selfish and self-centered and can be a complete bitch for no reason. However, I found that I actually liked reading about her character, even if she could be largely unlikeable. Similarly, there were aspects about her that I did like, such as how much she could care about someone once she decided to. She was also pretty determined not to give up once her mind got set on something and, in the end, I think she makes the right decision in a couple of different ways.

Sky is the other MC and also hard to like, but for different reasons than Vika. I'm glad we got Sky's POV because without them I wasn't super invested in his character and those chapters are what got me to actually like him. In the beginning, though, he seems sketchy and like he wants to judge Vika a ton (after seeing his POV later on I'm actually kind of dying to know what he was thinking in those moments, because he doesn't really seem the type). Seemingly everyone has an ulterior motive, Sky's just happens to (mostly) be the best one.

I liked Mira a lot and she's probably my favorite character. She's probably one of the few genuinely good people in the book (including Vika's dad, Ariel, and perhaps Sky). With people targeting Chapin heirs, I was genuinely worried about Mira. She's so caring and gentle to everyone and honestly is probably the best person to receive the inheritance.

Ariel is my other favorite character and I would kill for a companion book about her (before/during/after this one, I don't care). She's a scavenger pilot and a smuggler for the Philomeni Liberation Front (PLF), or the group of people trying to take care of people on the run-down sister planet and fight for liberation of the planet. She's super cool and seems to have an interesting backstory, so I do hope there's another book or a novella that centers on her.

There are several mysteries in the book that the characters need to puzzle through. I did figure most of them out before the reveal, but I will say the main mystery, the whodunnit, was actually very well written. I had my suspicions about who it was (and I was right!), but Terrill did a good job of making me second-guess myself right up until about the end.

Thank you to NetGalley and St. Martin's Press for providing this ARC in exchange for an honest review!

The premise of The Stars Between Us was intriguing enough for me to pick it up, but Vika was 100% the reason why I didn't enjoy this story as much as I thought I would (at least the cover art is pretty!). Vika is exactly how she describes herself in the story- selfish and full of herself. She's 18. She's EIGHTEEN YEARS OLD and she acts like a spoiled, entitled child as she's bossing around servants and acting like she's better than them at her new place on Ploutous as if she wasn't a bartender on Philomenus literally weeks before trying to bring in another source of income for her family. I get that she's attempting to fit into Ploutous society and doing a little "fake it till you make it" sort of thing, but when a good chunk of the book is talking about her going on expensive shopping sprees with her friends, dining at expensive restaurants, and going to lavish parties, I couldn't help but roll my eyes the entire way through.

Her romance with Sky came out of nowhere, in my opinion. She spends a good amount of time in the story treating him like dirt that's on the bottom of her shoe and creeped out about how he follows her everywhere with no real explanation (and I will admit that's the only thing I'll agree with Vika on) so I felt no chemistry between the two.

This book was clearly not for me.

I didn’t care about the characters at all. The romance felt underdeveloped and the confessions of love premature.

Even the twist regarding who the villain was failed to leave any impact on me. I believe this was supposed to be a retelling of sorts but I cannot for the life of me tell what.

I honestly love science fiction and space operas, but this book did NOT do it for me at all. The setting could have easily been anywhere on Earth rather than space, the world-building was pretty minimal. The plot is basically like a bad version of Pygmalion in space. Vika is full of herself, grating and annoying, which I could probably get over if the book had other qualities I liked, but it didn't. I couldn't stand the slang and vernacular grammar. I assume it's to illustrate Vika's underprivileged upbringing, and it would have been fine if it was in the dialogue, but it's in the actual text as well.

The Stars Between Is by Cristin Terrill
.
A YA Sci-Fi about two different people from two different planets. Vika discovers that the mysterious benefactor all her life has left her in his will. She is to marry his only son, in order for his son to inherit.
.
What I liked:
-This was a fun and easy read.
-Everyone loves a rags to riches story.
-The second half of the book was excellent. The mystery of who was behind the bombing kept my attention and I was struggling to decide who I suspected.
-I loved all the action.
-The ending was just right.
.
What I didn’t like:
-The first half of the book Vika comes off as really snooty and she bugged me, but the second half was much better.
.
4⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️