This book took me a while to finish most because of Vika. Vika was a different kind of main character and I only enjoyed that sometimes. The plot was overall enjoyable but I wish the books plot twists were a little less obvious. I liked Sky but the romance wasn't well done.

I don’t think I’ve ever hated a main character more than I hated Vika. I had high hopes going into this book but it felt very young YA. Great premise, just not executed as well as it could have been.

Well this was a fun ride! I am a huge fan of any type of mystery in a story. I always feel like it’s s fun game trying to piece together all the little clues along the way. I enjoyed the pacing of this story as well. I had a hard time putting the book down after each chapter. The mystery kept me curious to see if my assumptions were correct.

The world building could have been a little stronger. I had a hard time at first trying to piece together each planet and all the traveling. But once I kept reading it was easier to envision and understand.

Honestly, I had a hard time liking Vika at first. She is definitely head strong and knows what she wants. But she is also a bit bratty, and selfish. At times I wanted to shake some sense into her. I did enjoy seeing her character development through out the book. Towards the end I started enjoying her character a lot more. I can understand the struggles of trying so hard to please your family. But also trying to keep your happiness.

Oh Sky. I just wanted to scoop him up and give him a hug. He was probably one of my favorite parts of the book. I just wanted to scoop him up, and take him away from all of Vika’s drama.

What I did love:
-the twists! The story did keep you on your toes at times. I had an idea of who the villain was the whole time. But I was definitely second guessing myself at time.
-Ariel! She was definitely one of my favorite parts of the book. I love a good strong female character. She was super spunky, and absolutely clever.
-The pacing. What I said previously is true! The book was such a fun read. I really kept finding myself trying to sneak away for some more reading time.

Overall, I highly recommend this book to anyone looking for a sci-fi mystery with some romance thrown in. This book was a really fun and interesting read. 3.75 stars out of 5.

Thank you Netgalley for the ARC in exchange for an honest review!

Such a fun book and an easy read, exactly what you’d want from a YA Sci-Fi! Vika is an interesting character, who spends most of the book torn between who she was raised as and who she actually is. There are twists in this book that you’ll see coming, and other twists you’ll have no idea about! It’s a good mixture of the two, because it lures you into a false sense of knowledge as to how the book will end. Super fun and a worthwhile read!

I'm on the fence about this how much I like/love this book. The setting and plot are amazing and could have definitely set up for a series instead of a stand alone book. The MC has great character growth but at some points in the beginning it is really hard to like her. She's self centered and unnecessarily mean to the male lead, but about half way through the book her character changes and it makes reading so much easier. The ending of the book left me wanting something though I'm not sure exactly what. The storyline is wrapped up nicely and all the characters get their happy ending but I wanted something more. Overall, it was a good read just not great.

The Stars Between Us follows Vika Hale, a poor worker who is suddenly elevated to wealthy status when it's revealed she's to marry Leo Chapin, heir to a billion dollar fortune/company. Then Leo dies in a spaceship explosion and all Vika's chances of escaping are crushed. Or so she thinks...
The Gardeners, the new will benefactors, come to meet her and offer to take her in. Vika jumps at the chance, but what she doesn't expect is to meet Sky Foster again, a mysterious young man she met briefly before leaving her home planet. Sky works for her benefactors and the two begin to suspect outside forces are trying to shape who receives the Chapin fortune.

The worldbuilding was interesting. I liked the idea of Vika living on a dystopian planet, that she also lived on back when it was thriving, and I was interested in this idea that Vika was being groomed her whole life. The deep mystery and getting to have peeks into the eyes of the person behind all the treachery, while not finding out his/her identity until the end also keep me intrigued.
Although Vika was a little unlikable the rest of the characters were well developed and I especially liked Ariel. The love aspect was a little 'meh', but the ending was solid and overall this was a fun quick read!

The Stars Between Us follows Vika Hale, a poor worker who is suddenly elevated to wealthy status when it's revealed she's to marry Leo Chapin, heir to a billion dollar fortune/company. Then Leo dies in a spaceship explosion and all Vika's chances of escaping are crushed. Or so she thinks...
The Gardeners, the new will benefactors, come to meet her and offer to take her in. Vika jumps at the chance, but what she doesn't expect is to meet Sky Foster again, a mysterious young man she met briefly before leaving her home planet. Sky works for her benefactors and the two begin to suspect outside forces are trying to shape who receives the Chapin fortune.

The worldbuilding was interesting. I liked the idea of Vika living on a dystopian planet, that she also lived on back when it was thriving, and I was interested in this idea that Vika was being groomed her whole life. The deep mystery and getting to have peeks into the eyes of the person behind all the treachery, while not finding out his/her identity until the end also keep me intrigued.
Although Vika was a little unlikable the rest of the characters were well developed and I especially liked Ariel. The love aspect was a little 'meh', but the ending was solid and overall this was a fun quick read!

A good light read. Well written so the story keeps moving with enough twists and turns to keep it interesting. I won't give any spoilers but there are a couple of good surprises as the story progresses. I have not seen anything by this writer in the past, but this was good enough to keep his name on the look for more list. The ending is as expected, but getting there was fun. I would say this is a good romantic thriller. The setting gives it a sci-fi twist.

Thank you #netgalley #stmartinspress and #wednesdays books for this Advanced Readers Copy of this book in return for an honest review of the book.

This is the ARC I've been waiting for. This Dystopian, Scifi, Romance is fantastic. It compels to turn those pages and burn through those chapters.

It's a murder mystery, Rich planet vs. Poor planet, family dynamics, love vs. financial stability, the dangers of finances, and too much champagne.

Viktoria aka Vika Hale finds out she's engaged when a reclusive billionaire names her the fiance of his son, Leo Chapin, who is then murdered in an explosion on the spaceship taking him home and the inheritance goes to his housekeeper, Mira. Mira brings Vika to live with her and her husband, Hal because they feel badly that Vika was given hope of a new life and then had it ripped away from her. But Vika, who is now going by Viktoria, find a surprise. The young man, Sky Foster, she rented a room to in the housing unit her father manages is now employed by Mira's husband.

Vika and Sky are caught up in a web as the story unfolds. Should Vika marry for money so she can take care of her family or should she follow her heart. And Sky has a secret of his own. But both are trying to find out who is trying to kill the Chapin inheritors.

This author is new to me and I think she is fabulous. I was thrilled to see she part of the writer's group with Beth Revis. I love writers supporting writers.

I highly recommend this book.

I received a copy of this book from Netgalley and Wednesday Books.

For me, this book was a slow start but once it got going I was entranced. I'd sell it ass scifi take on Pride and Prejudice.
I absolutely loved being in this world.

Thank you NetGalley and St. Martin’s Press and Wednesday’s Books for allowing me to read this ARC in exchange for an honest review. All opinions and views in this review are purely my own and not associated with any brand.

I LOVED this book. Cristin Terrill created the most compelling world and societal structure. Sci-if tends to take me a little longe to read for some reason but I flew through this one. The writing was easy to follow and the story was so excellent that II was captured by this book right away. I did figure out most of the twist before the end but I wasn’t bothered by that. I still enjoyed the journey! This book felt like a mix of Pride and Prejudice and The Gilded Age. Only Vika was both proud and prejudice and everyone was the snotty people from the Gilded Age. I loved every minute of this book!! I would definitely recommend to a friend.

Thank you to St. Martin's Press, Wednesday's Books and NetGalley for an Advanced Readers Copy of this novel.

Vika Hale grew up extremely poor on an impoverished world after her dad loses his job. All her life, she has been given a step up by a mysterious benefactor. Little did she know that she had caught the eye of a billionaire who had included her in his will. The only caveat is that he had selected her as a wife for his son, who would only inherit his fortune if they married within two years after the magnate's death.

Swept up in a world of wealth and privilege, Vika is overwhelmed by her new life and gets caught up in the superficial and the rich. She and her guardian's assistant, Sky Foster, discover that someone has been targeting the will's benefactor, and it's a fight to find out who is behind the destruction before she is silenced. She also has to deal with the guilt of leaving her family behind.

I thought this was a fun and well written story. I wasn't sure what to expect, but I enjoyed it and will be checking out Cristin Terrill's other novels.

thank you to netgalley and the publisher for providing me an ARC! giving this 3.7 stars- i enjoyed this a lot more than i thought i was going to, honestly. in ARC fashion, here are my positives and negatives:

(+) accents. i like when the accents are written out, sorry! adds more flavor. if this is a peeve of yours, note that the accents don’t take up a majority of the dialogue. but i liked them, so i’m putting it up as a positive.

(+) vika. she’s a refreshing main character to follow. “i would never (insert super minor spoiler from the beginning), i have morals” okay well vika would! and i respect that! i just love when we go unconventional routes and the mc ends up being a bad person.

but also (-) vika. i can only handle so much snobbish disrespect coming from a single person and still root for them. by the time we hit 50% this revolutionary attitude got old.

(?) planets. not something i liked or disliked, but i just wanted to comment that the movement between planets is less interstellar and more fresh prince of bel-air. vika goes from her broke planet to a super rich one, but you could have just switched the planets’ names out with places in new york and changed nothing else and i would have read this book the exact same. now that i think about it, (-) world building was lacking.

(?) sky. legitimately the most spineless character i’ve ever met. not a spine in sight. at all. i can respect it, but vika needed to be put in her place with her horrible attitude and it never happened. no further comments. i do, however, appreciate that we got his POV.

(-) the insta-love? romance. is it enemies to lovers if one of them has always been in love with the other and the other jumps immediately to love after realizing they no longer dislike the other? is it really?

(-) murder. was lacking.

(+) this is super minor, but: the immediate reveal of the reasoning for the mysterious old man benefactor. honestly, i’m just glad we didn’t hold this information in until the end as a “surprise! here’s why the rich old man put you in his will!” moment. mentioning it at the beginning made the plot a bit more interesting, and i can also just imagine myself rolling my eyes to the ground if this information was held as a plot twist.

-
recommend: mmm, sure. was it predictable? yes. were the space and murder parts underwhelming? yes. but was it easy to read and enjoyable? also yes.



Review published on Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/4576129350

I was really looking forward to The Stars Between us after having enjoyed Terrill’s other books, but sadly I found that it didn’t quite live up to my expectations. While I found the premise intriguing, I love anything that mixes historical inspiration with futuristic settings, I found the lack of clear world building and overly simplistic characters a bit of a let down. While I fully think many readers, especially the younger demographic, might find the writing style and plot pacing to be very readable and engaging, I found myself getting bored and lacking any true connection to the characters, especially Vika. It could perhaps function best for those who are just starting to explore the sci-fi genre, specially young adult readers.

On a positive note. I love a mystery plot line and the pacing leant itself well to the intrigue and society dynamics in the story. The romance was compelling, though I did find the enemies to lovers trope a little too overwrought for my tastes. I think that’s what my review primarily comes down to— The Stars Between us just wasn’t suited to my particular tastes, but I do really believe it will appeal to a wide readership.

I didn’t have the biggest hopes for this book during the first chapter with the writing until I realized it was the character’s voice. Even more, I wasn’t sure of the plot. But by the third chapter I put the book down to go to sleep and I woke up the next morning wanting to continue reading. And that same longing feeling kept coming back every time I was doing something else.

The Stars Between Us is about a girl named Vika who lives on a planet that is poor while their sister planet thrives. She is given the opportunity to move to the other planet as long as she marries the son of the wealthiest man in the galaxy who just passed away. As she prepares to leave, the son, Leo, is killed in an accident. Vika’s dreams of splendor are crushed until the new benefactors invite her to live with them as an apology for Leo’s death.

What ensues is a story of mystery, mistrust and power struggle as Vika clings onto her new lifestyle while trying to solve the possible murder of Leo Chaplin.

The story was engaging for me. Parts of it were corny but still enjoyable. The only thing keeping me from giving it a 5 star rating was Vika’s power hungry persona. She would flip between that and compassion frequently and it lessened her character with it.

Otherwise, great read and highly recommend! Thanks for the early access net galley & wednesday books !

I love the cover. I love the name.
I love the concept. This book looks amazing. I am so exited to read it!

Unfortunately, this story isn't for me. I had a lot of trouble getting into it and I haven't been able to finish it. I would like to give it another go (hopefully with fresher eyes) later on but for now: 2.5 stars.

Vika and the other characters + the story aren't particularly appealing to me, which made it hard to get invested.

This book is mildly interesting to read about. It had a bit of everything I love, and it has reminded me of many books I read in the past, perfect if one like the vibes of 'The inheritance game.' Over all, it was a fairly easy read for those who like to devour books in one sitting without rereading pages because of complicated plot structure. This book is 100% for you. Christin Terrill did a wonderful job with the characters and very well rounded with each of their personalities mystery, suspense was very well done.

I was immediately sold on reading this title when I saw it compared to Bridgerton in Space. I blew through this title within 48 hours and loved every second of it! I can’t wait to read more from this author.

10/10 for the cover art. but 3/5 overall for the book. it was predictable, but the writing is fabulous. i liked the mystery, but found myself rooting against vika, she just wasn't very likeable, but maybe that's the point? i was interested in the world thought and all the space politics.