The Stars Between is an entertaining, fast-paced adventure.

The heroine Vika lives on a poor planet Philomenus and she and her family are barely getting by. Then she learns that a famous billionaire has died and his son will only inherit the family fortune if he marries Vika. She's only just beginning to deal with her new reality when the son, Leo, is killed in a spaceship explosion and her good fortune seems to have evaporated. But the new heirs bring her to live with them on the wealthy neighboring planet. She quickly acclimates to her new high-society lifestyle, but she begins to think that Leo's death may have not been an accident.

The book does a great job in showing the disparity between the two planets, Ploutos and Philomenus. Ploutos is very much the home of the 1%, while Ploutos suffers from poverty. The Philomeni Liberation Front tries to provide food and money to the needy, but they're persecuted by the police for doing so. Wealth is shown as a corrupting influence. When Vika first moves Ploutos and receives a generous allowance, she almost forgets how her family is struggling back on Philomenus. And one of her mentors becomes almost a different person after inheriting the fortune.

Parts of the plot are a bit predictable, but this didn't lessen my enjoyment of the story. It's really the how, who, and why that matter, and not the what.

"The Stars Between Us" by Cristin Terrill is an audiobook that takes you on an interstellar journey filled with intrigue, romance, and self-discovery. This story isn't just a space adventure; it's a deep dive into the complexities of relationships, ambition, and the choices that define us.

The story follows Veronyka, a girl from a disadvantaged planet, who dreams of a better life among the stars. When she meets the wealthy and mysterious, Sowan, her life takes a dramatic turn, launching her into the glittering world of the galaxy's elite. Yet, this new world is as full of secrets and dangers as it is of opulence and technology.

The narration of this audiobook is a standout feature. The narrator captures Veronyka's sense of wonder, Sowan's enigmatic charm, and the vibrant array of supporting characters with distinct voices and emotional depth. Their performance immerses the listener in the story, enhancing the drama and the excitement of Terrill's writing.

Cristin Terrill's world-building is both imaginative and intricate. The societal structures, the technology, and the vivid descriptions of different planets make the setting feel tangible and richly detailed. The contrast between Veronyka's humble beginnings and the extravagant space society she enters is striking and adds layers to the narrative.

What I particularly enjoyed about this audiobook is its exploration of themes like class disparity, the price of ambition, and the power of human connection. Veronyka's journey is not just physical but also emotional, as she navigates complex relationships and discovers her own strength and values.

The pacing of the story is well-handled, balancing action-packed scenes with moments of introspection and character development. The romance is tender yet fraught with challenges, adding a heartfelt dimension to the space adventure.

In conclusion, "The Stars Between Us" is a compelling and thought-provoking audiobook that combines the wonder of space exploration with deep emotional resonance. Cristin Terrill has created a universe that is as vast and beautiful as it is filled with intrigue and human drama. This audiobook is a perfect pick for those who love their science fiction with a strong emotional core and richly drawn characters. It's an interstellar journey worth taking!

Cristin Terrill's audiobook, The Stars Between Us, is an exciting and suspenseful YA novel that will take listeners on a thrilling ride through a mysterious and dangerous world. With a captivating storyline and well-developed characters, Terrill's book is a must-read for fans of YA fiction. The audiobook production from Wednesday Books is well-narrated and brings the story to life in a way that will keep you on the edge of your seat. A highly recommended listen!

"Vika Hale longs for a better life than that of a barmaid on a struggling planet, but her dreams have always seemed out of reach despite the mysterious benefactor who bankrolled her education. When the elusive billionaire dies and names Vika in his will, she’s whisked away to a glittering and glamorous new world as the ward of his heir. Suddenly, her wildest dreams don’t seem so impossible.

But when someone targets the will’s heirs in a series of terrifying bombings, Vika’s new life is thrown into uncertainty. Knowing that she may be next, Vika teams up with the one person she’d rather keep at arm’s length—her guardian’s mysterious new assistant, Sky Foster. She doesn't trust Sky, but he may be the only one who can help her discover the bomber’s identity before she becomes the next victim. As Vika grows closer to Sky, she realizes she may not escape these new threats unscathed. Sky is keeping a secret and it's one that could unravel everything.

In The Stars Between Us, Cristin Terrill sweeps readers away to a world where secrets are currency and love is the most dangerous risk of all."

At first, I liked the main character. Then I abhorred her. Then she redeemed herself. So, I would say this book was mildly entertaining. The disgusting difference in wealth in the book was so sad. Very reminiscent of our world.

I didn’t like this one. I feel like the main character was much younger than what was supposed to be written. I didn’t even finish this one just because she was so unlikeable.

The narrator was easy to understand and clear. I didn’t love the story and I wasn’t drawn in because the main character seemed a little too snooty and bratty, but it was still an interesting story, it just wasn’t for me.

While this wasn't my favorite read lately, I still found it enjoyable.

THE STARS BETWEEN US is set in a glittering new world, about a girl who discovers that behind the glamor and romance, the world is teeming with conspiracies, secrets and murder.

I listened to the book on audio, and the narrator was a good choice for the story and held my interest. It just came down to pacing for me, but it may have been a case of me not the book.

*many thanks to Wednesday Books and Macmillan Audio for the gifted copy for review

Took me a while to get into this book. I loved the who done it mystery portion and I wanted to love the book completely however, I did not. The writing style felt inconsistent at times which really threw the pacing of the story. The world building needed more and I was not routing for the main character.

The Stars Between Us by Cristin Terrill is an intriguing look at life and all of it's foibles and follies. And all of it's goodness and joy. Vica lives on a poor planet in a housing tenement. She works in a bar slinging booze for patrons who have no hope for a better future. For most of her life, she has had a mysterious benefactor helping her. When he suddenly dies, she is thrust into a new society. In his will, he said that if she married his son, then his son would receive his very vast fortune. However, she has never met the son. Her life is suddenly chaos. She finds herself in a new environment, surrounded by the wealthy and unsure of anything. Then, an almost fatal accident reveals that heirs of the will are being targeted and it is up to Vica and Sky, someone she doesn't really know and doesn't trust at all, to discover who is targeting them, before they are next.
A really intense read. I thought the narrator was great. I really liked the story and it kept me guessing until the end!
Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the chance to listen to and review the book.

This was such a great listen. I listen to books at 2x and the narrator did a great job! I both read and listened to this book and loved the expression that the narrator provided, it gave a new feel to the book! I absolutely fell in love with audiobooks from this and I cannot wait for everyone to listen to this OUTSTANDING read!

This book was exceptionally hard to get into. Vika and her family were annoying from the start. I definitely couldn't stand their take on "swear" words. I get that it's YA, but it would have been better to just not use those attempts because it made the book feel immature. I know this is supposed to be a sci-fi/fantasy, but the world building wasn't there and the story fell flat.

Wanted something so much more from this book. Pretty upset with how this one read. Never wanted to actually pick it up and continue. Felt like a chore to read. Glad I had the audio to keep me going

This is one of those books that I did not expect to love as much as I ended up loving it. The plot itself is a simple concept, but throughout the story it only gets thicker & stakes get higher, surprises at every turn, deceits at the ready, it honestly feels like one of those books that's just a big budget Hollywood movie waiting to happen, it's that good.
I really enjoyed the emotions and delivery from the narrator, this book was actually my escape from two yappy dogs I was looking after, so it certainly helped that the story was good, and I could sit back and get swept away by the emotive narration and wonderful storyline.
Vicca is not the most likeable character by any means, but I think this story is written well in the sense that the main character can be relatable to almost anyone, not due to her personality, but due to circumstance. I enjoyed that she sometimes makes decisions that I as a reader would scream out loud about, but I was never annoyed enough to the point where I felt the story was suffering because of an entirely relatably clueless & often selfish main character. There is some major character development happening throughout the story with both characters, you can honestly feel their chemistry through the goddamn pages, every single one of the characters, including secondary ones, are written to absolute perfection. Every character has a rhyme & reason & motivations, you will be truly whiplashed by how many characters you like that turn out to be incredibly irredeemable.
How I could best describe this story would be a Galaxy-heist with enemies to lovers, princess/pauper kind of vibe, with some Shamalan-level twists & a real-world lens on a fictionalized world.
This book delves a lot into the lives of the working class, the impacts of growing up poor, & just how much one is willing to pay to get to the top.
Please read this book, especially if you're angry with the state of the world right now, it is a great fictionalized account of what is going on right now in terms of capitalism.

I enjoyed The Stars Between Us and it was an adorable read. However, this book was very predictable and I saw all the twists coming from the very beginning of the book. For that reason it is a 3 out of 5 stars

I think there is definitely a lot to like about this one. The world-building is fun and really good. I didn't feel like I connected well with the characters and I don't know that I really enjoyed any of them. The overall story also just felt ok.

I enjoyed The Stars Between Us and I’m especially interested in wanting to know what’s next for Sky. The writing style gave me similar vibes to some of EK Johnston’s Star Wars books, which was really neat as I do find that style to be really compelling and full of worldliness and a sense of adventure and self-understanding.

PROS:
✨The world building. The setting is a blend of space and dystopian society, which I loved and the higher number of locations mentioned did not get confusing or overwhelming.
✨Secondary characters. I didn’t feel like there were wasted characters in the book. Yes, some of them are there to help move the story forward but they felt intentional and like they were truly a part of the story.
✨Pacing. The audio was really well done and well paced and the writing itself added to that as it kept pushing towards the end of the story instead of hanging around in weird side plots.

CONS:
✨People in this world, especially Vika, are simultaneously too trusting and super suspicious of each other. It seemed really inconsistent to me that in that aspect and while I know the average person has that duality of being hesitant from time to time and more trusting in other situations, it just felt like blind trust in people whom most of us would have been more skeptical of and then blind suspicion in characters that didn’t feel convenient to those characters’ search for wealth and popularity.
✨ Character development for Sky and the Gardeners were definitely there but I didn’t see it for Vika. I’m not saying this just because she’s a “ruthless” or “focused” character but because there are SEVERAL times throughout the book were she recognizes what she’s doing/not doing isn’t helping her be the kind of person she wants to be or allowing her to treat the people she cares about the way she wants to, yet doesn’t make the corresponding changes or try to implement anything like more contact with her own family. Maybe this is because she’s young or because if there is another installation the author wants that change to feel “bigger” but I would have appreciated a little more of it.

This book was good. I don't quine know what it reminds me of, but there's something about the secret billionaire love trope going on that's familiar beyond just knowing the trope.

I’m trying to be kind to this book, because YA Sci-Fi is a genre that has been mostly relegated to dystopian Hunger Games clones for the last decade. In theory, a Dickensian planet featuring a girl suddenly thrust into high society due to a sudden arranged marriage is at least a step in the direction of the completely unexplored concept of "Jane Austen in space." But to quote the greatest Pride and Prejudice review of all time, when you boil the story down to the barest of bare bones it really is just “a bunch of people going to each other’s houses.” The Stars Between Us is not even that.

I think I could have suffered the heroine Vika a little more if it felt like she had done anything to earn her sudden enormous wealth. But by the end of book I still wasn’t clear as to why Sky’s father picked her as his son’s future bride. I also was immediately put off by how quickly she embraced a life of frivolity and lavish expense. Her dynamics with her family back on her home planet was also bizarre, a kind of ambivalence that has no basis even any kind of bad blood between them. It was so unlike a family dynamic I’d ever seen written on page - either toxic or wholesome - that I was wondering why her sister even existed if not to occasionally pop up and make a mostly harmlessly barbed comment. Vika basically ignored them as soon as she entered the upper echelon of high society and spent almost the entirety of the novel proving her complete and utter disregard of them.

Sky was the blandest of cardboard cutout YA male leads I’ve encountered in a while, and his hilarious Clark Kent disguise of glasses and a dye job that even the woman who raised him can’t see past only makes him more of a joke. I think the whole dynamic of “rich boy humbled as he watches poor girl inherit his fortune” could have been a fun dynamic to explore. But he could have solved every single plot inconvenience and roadblock in the story in an instant by revealing his true identity and quite frankly that just makes him a very intently destructive character to the story’s integrity. It’s hard to feel like there’s stakes when one character has the power to solve everything… and then you just end up resenting that character when he refuses to solve everything out of fear of losing the respect of his "crush.”

All in all, what reads as a fun, flighty premise that could have really leaned into a Jane Austen romance in space direction falls flat when matched with two dislikeable main leads and a forgettable mystery plotline. While the actual writing here was solid, I somehow come away from this feeling disappointed despite having gone in with zero expectations and a hazy recollection of the synopsis.

Thank you to the publisher Macmillan Audio for providing an audiobook ARC via NetGalley for an honest review.

A creative retelling of the Dickins classic. The characters and the stories are well developed however I am not sure who the intended audience is. The book may not appeal to teen readers and it will be missed by new adult/adult readers.

The Stars Between Us by Cristin Terrill, narrated by Stephanie Willing
🎧⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️


—light spoilers in the “plot and pacing” and “character development” critiques—

Summary
In the same vein as Marissa Meyer’s Lunar Chronicles, Cristin Terrill delivers an exciting space opera. Vika and her impoverished family live on a struggling planet with little hope of change. Her life is rocked when she discovers a mysterious, wealthy benefactor has bequeathed her a fortune. But, of course, there’s a catch. She must marry the billionaire’s son.

Sky lives as an outsider oscillating between worlds of poverty and wealth. As the assistant to the heir of a billionaire’s estate, he is trying to find his purpose while simultaneously fighting his attraction to Vika, the new inhabitant of his employer’s home. Vika is distrustful of new people and her new place in the social hierarchy. She is especially wary of Sky, his position in her benefactor’s life, and the way he has endeared himself to her family.

When relationships in the house begin to fray, Vika and Sky both realize that one small tug on the tapestry of secrets surrounding them could unravel both of their lives. Will they work together to protect each other and the futures they’re trying to build or use what they know to bring the other down?

Strengths
The world building was, as the youths say, *chef’s kiss.* The details of the dystopian-like hovel Vika inhabits for most of her life add to the story instead of weighing it down. It’s rare to find a YA sci-fi book that does this well. Often there are too many details and it slows the pace of the story, or there are too few and it is disorienting. The way Vika’s new home and lifestyle are often simply implied to be in direct contrast to the poverty on her home planet. This is a wonderful way to keep the story moving along!

Another strength is the secondary characters. Even if the character was unlikable, they were well-rounded and believable. No secondary character felt unnecessary or just a tool to move the plot along (even if maybe they were sometimes!)

I’ll discuss it more thoroughly in my dialogue review portion, but dialogue was definitely a strength.

Plot and pacing
Let me just preface my critique of the plot by stating my admiration for the pacing of this book. I think pacing can make up for an abundance of plot sins, and that is definitely the case here. (If there are going to be plot holes, don’t make a reader wallow in them!) Despite some issues with the coherence of the story, the plot carries you along quickly enough that a reader doesn’t have too much time to dwell on what isn’t working for the story.

The plot had some holes. Like, big gaping holes. My first and most urgent question is this: why didn’t Vika’s parents ask more questions about her benefactor? That is creepy! And it is irresponsible for a grown up to just be like “it’s cool that an old man has been tracking my daughter’s health and cognition since early childhood.” WTF NO

Another issue with the plot is that no one recognized Sky. It was very much like a cheesy b movie in which the ugly duckling girl takes off her glasses and lets her hair fall from her chignon and POOF SHE’S A HOTTIE. Except in this case it’s some glasses and poor people clothes and POOF HE IS A BILLIONAIRE. It was just really hard for me to get past.

My last issue (but the hardest one for me to get past) with the plot is also a character development issue, so I’ll be more thorough there, but Vika describes herself as distrustful, but then only applies that to Sky and not the other randos in the story. Without that descriptor it wouldn’t be an issue, but it seems to come up a lot but she reserves all her animosity for him for no other reason except he is there.

Dialogue
Dialogue was beautiful and stands out in a sea of poorly written YA books I’ve picked up lately. It seemed natural and authentic for each character. The distinct voices of even minor characters added to the richness of the world Terrill built for the story. It is a strength for the book, but it also seems to be a strength for Terrill, and it makes me want to read her other works.

POV
Dual POV is rarely done well, but I enjoyed the perspective of both Vika and Sky. I think having both of their POV added to the intrigue and contributed to the nice pacing of the book.

Character development
In a character driven plot, I expected more in terms of character development. But Vika doesn’t grow at all. Sure, there are moments of self realization— like the scene in which she takes her dad to a restaurant. But then nothing really changes in her thoughts or behavior toward others. She is also constantly expecting Sky to find her vapid and selfish, but she is just telling on herself. She claims she is distrustful, and we are supposed to perceive her as street-smart, but she is mostly just antagonistic toward Sky for no apparent reason.

Comparatively, there is quite a bit of growth in Sky, but I don’t understand why he is such a doormat at times. And I don’t know what he sees in hostile Vika. There is no slow burn, and it’s not an “enemies to lovers” situation. It’s more of a “wimpy admirer and immature (but redeemable) brat turned allies” story. I think the story could have been richer with better character development for both main characters. This is the weakest part of the book.

Narration
I listened to the audiobook narrated by Stephanie Willing. She performed both POVs and did a lovely job. I’ll be looking for more books she narrates.

Rating
I’m giving this one 3.75 stars because I really wanted to see growth in Vika and had a hard time getting past some of her irrational and inconsistent behavior. However, the dialogue and world building were excellent, and I was loving the predictable but fun drama. I can’t wait to go read Cristin Terrill’s other books!

Thank you, Macmillan Audio and Wednesday Books for the opportunity to experience this ARC!