Jessica is a 17 year old who hasn't seen her scientist parents in 6 years but is now on her way to reunite with them as they spend a year surveying a post-extinction planet. To travel such a distance, she has to teleport, which involves taking a bio-scan of someone, printing a new body at the destination with that bio-scan, and then destroying the reference body. Jessica arrives on the ship orbiting the planet and takes a few days to adjust while she waits for her parents' arrival, who were delayed due to a technical issue. The story then starts to split from there, as Jessica also wakes up on the planet and has no idea how she ended up there. The book then alternates chapters of "before" and after" and without giving away the plot twist, it starts to look at what it means to be a person. In this universe bio-scans hold a person's memories and personality and can be transferred to any new body, which becomes a central point as Jessica orients herself after the teleportation. Overall, a quick but interesting horror adventure set in space and on a post-extinction planet that explores the idea of what makes a person. Readers of Brandon Sanderson's Skyward series, or other technical world building sci-fi books will like this one.

A big thanks to Netgalley for providing an eARC, and Penguin Teen and Bookish First for providing a physical copy to review.

Oh my gosh, is this book a whirlwind of twist and turns. In both the good and not so good way.

Star Splitter by Matthew J. Kirby is YA sc-ifi novel that follows the tumultuous life of Jessica Mathers, who has recently crashed landed on an uninhabited planet that was supposed to be her parent's pride and joy with their research colony. But everything goes awry, when the supposedly perfect teleportation of her time, starts to go wrong and she wakes alone and desperate for an explanation. But all she can find in her new world, is a set of freshly dug graves with names she doesn't recognize.

Kirby's novel creates the perfect blend between horror and sci-fy, with the essential question behind it being, how far will you go to survive? And are you still you if there was another version of yourself? I often found myself reeling from the page and closing the book in shock. As I needed a quick second to comprehend what I just read.

I only wish some of Jessica's backstory was a little more fleshed out, and some of the cooler technologies were explored a bit more. Regardless, this doesn't tamper how mind bending this book really is.

I don't want to give away too much of the twists and turns that are provided within Star Splitter, but if you're a fan of some heavy science fiction and are okay with your mind being blown inside out. Feel free to check out this book.

4.5 out of 5 stars (4.5 / 5) I’ve recently come to love space books. Nothing ever goes right and there is always some exciting catastrophe. Throw in a new planet with new beings and plants and I’m hooked! This was no different.

I absorbed every detail. The twist was fabulously unique and done so well. I’m impressed at the ability to keep each POV separate without confusion. That had to be quite the feat! I loved the characters. Each one had personality and intelligence that added to the story.

That end? Wow! I’m still thinking about it. It’s mind-blowing to imagine if this was reality and the true consequences of it. I love imagining all the different possibilities. My only problem was one scene went on a bit too long but it never lost my attention. I’d absolutely read a series based on this book. I need more!

Thank you to Penguin Teen for the gifted copy!

The book releases April 25, 2023.

A unique take on a YA SciFi story.

Star Splitter is hard to review without completely giving away spoilery plot points.
The chapters alternate between a 'Before' and 'After'. Essentially splitting the timeline, showing how Jessica's story unfolds and eventually collides with...itself. In a way.
It was a bit confusing for me in moments to keep up with what (and where and who) was going on, but the story is so intriguing I really didn't mind the confusion and weirdly, I think it added to the reading experience.

There's mention of Jessica liking her friend back on Earth, but no romance in the plot whatsoever. There is plenty of planetary exploration, scifi-y stuff, and some hold-your-breath, thrilling moments making the story overall, quite enjoyable. I found myself reading quickly simply to know what happens next. Would I read it again though? Probably not.


Thank you to PenguinTeen for the advanced copy to read and honestly review.

Jessica is on her way into deep space to join her parents on the spaceship Theseus which is hovering above planet Carver 1061c where Jessica is doomed to spend the next year with her parents while they research the planet for habitability. She'd much rather spend more time on Earth with her grandparents and her friends (especially a certain crush named Avery). But she's being broken down into itty bits and reestablished in a different universe. However, when she wakes up, she isn't on the Theseus. She's on the planet. With another Jessica (the first copy who was printed there 3 weeks ago or so) in a crashed lander surrounded by graves of the rest of the crew. Her other self is being cagey about what happened and where her parents are, and why she very illegally printed another copy of herself. Through alternating chapters from both Jessica's perspectives, readers get to slowly unravel the truth and what happened to the crew of the Theseus.

Matthew Kirby certainly knows how to spin an enticing mystery. He really has readers questioning whether or not Jessica can trust herself to the end. The slow reveal of the past is paced well to keep you reading and revising your guesses. The futuristic science and far distant imagined planet dominated from a super volcano were also intriguing, especially for all the moral dilemmas the teleporting tech presents. (The imagined planet was just cool, and a little different from any other planet I've read about.) That said, I didn't really like Jessica all that much (I liked human Duncan more and kind of wish we followed him around some), and I was really rooting for version 2 to pull off something clever that never really materialized. I was also disappointed that cute little alien creature Duncan didn't show up again after the river incident. So well-written mystery, an intriguing setting, futuristic tech that makes you think, but several characters you don't necessarily care about what happens to.

Notes on content [based on the ARC]: 42 mild swears, 3 moderate swears, 2 strong uses of profanity, and 15 strong swears. No sexual content beyond Jessica thinking about the girl she has a crush on (not acted on at all). There are deaths (some are murders), some are described in a bit of gory detail, others happen off page.

I received an ARC of this title from the publisher through NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

This was a fun, short read that had a decent blend of action, suspense, and mystery. Set in the far future, teleportation has become a routine way of quickly traveling light years away to distant ships and planets. What is instantly fascinating is in this book, teleportation is done by creating a digital file of a person-their life, medical history, etc- that is then uploaded at a new location. The process results in the reference body (the original flesh and blood body you are born with) being destroyed, so a new one is printed for you using the digital file. This is such an interesting take on teleportation, and gives a lot of space to play with the idea of what is personhood in a way that we don't always get in scifi. The mc is Jessica, a 17 year old teleporting out to a faraway planet to meet her parents. However, things go wrong when she wakes up in the middle of a wrecked ship. Jessica soon realizes she's also not the first version of herself there, she was also present when the ship crashed and later printed another copy of herself. The past and present plots are tied in well together, with the backstory of how things came to be revealed slowly throughout. I thought the story was solid, the ending was ambiguous but good, and I enjoyed the characters. I did feel like some plot points, like the truth of Jessica's father and the aliens they found on the planet, were not fully addressed in a satisfying way, but since the emphasis was more on Jessica (and Jessica) as a person, it worked out well.

Thank you to NetGalley for an advance copy of this book.

This was an interesting story. The book chronicles the experience of Jessica after she teleports into deep space to be with her parents. Things go wrong and we wind up with two Jessicas and something gone very wrong with her father. I was intrigued by some parts of this book and wanted to know more, and then some parts left me confused. The last quarter or so was so interesting as we start to find out what happened before the second Jessica, but then the book just ends without any real explanation of what happened to her dad and what was really going on with the planet they were set to explore.

This one was interesting, and I enjoyed the way the story explored what made a person who they were as the characters dealt with issues concerning teleportation. However, the story never came together for me, in that it never seemed to decide what it was trying to tell. Was this a scifi adventure? A YA romance? A horror story? A first contact story? I found, in the end, I couldn't tell, and that makes it harder for me to recommend it easily to other readers. Thank you to Netgalley for the chance to read this one. It was ambitious and unique in it's approach.

The very first chapter of this book from the POV of Jim (is that was the liaison's name was?) was sort of a lackluster start to the story. It didn't really hit the ground running, and I think that Jessica was a compelling enough character that we could have just started in her POV and gone from there. I did like the story, though I do wish there were a bit more of the space-horror aspects that I expected from the blurb. This story was also a lot shorter than I thought it was going to be, which resulted in it being really fast paced much to the detriment of the worldbuilding and lore. The world-building was okay, but there was a point where...the "ghost" of an alien fossil gets superimposed over multiple photos and we get a strange explanation of time from one of the space ship's crew, and then we just....never really go back to that? Also the dad goes crazy/has a bug from teleportation that also doesn't really get explored. I don't know. It wasn't bad, but there were *a lot* of loose threads of ideas that don't get tied up. I really wish there was more of the planet exploration, because there is a lot of "what makes me me? Are me (Jessica clone) and OG Jessica different or the same?" and bickering, but not a lot of planet world-building/plot on the planet.
Overall, this was well-written, but it ends a bit abruptly with a lot of unanswered questions (that probably could have been answered if the book was longer than 300 pages. This is one of the few instances where I want more pages instead of less, haha).

Thank you Netgalley and publisher for the ARC.

2.5/5 rounded up to 3.

Star Splitter follows one character for the majority of the book, Jessica Mathers. Unfortunately the character development left a lot to be desired. As a reader we just barely scratch the surface of Jessica Mathers. Who is she as a person? Why should we care about her? I think the author should have fleshed out her character a lot more- because that is who we are stuck with for the entire book. The side characters were equally unimpressive and seemingly unimportant. The entire crew on DS Theseus was just so BLEH. BORING.

The writing was mediocre. I'm not a big fan of paragraphs after paragraphs describing the most mundane tasks. A lot of the descriptions should have been cut to make room for actual plot. Pacing was also a little bit clunky. At times the story was dragging and then suddenly we were blasting through the pages.

A lot of ideas and concepts are brought up never to be explained or touched on again. I would have liked to know more about the alien ghost subplot because it was actually very interesting.

Matthew J. Kirby had some fantastic ideas, and some of them do show (mostly in the last 25 percent of the book). I think the potential was there, because the parts I did enjoy- I enjoyed them a lot. The science and concept of cloning (plus the ramifications) are very intriguing.

Anyway, Star Splitter makes you want to keep reading. The reader will find it hard to resist getting to the bottom of the mysterious things that are happening. As well, there is just enough thrilling scenes to keep you hooked.

This whole book was confusing. What happened at the end? Did the whole book restart? Was this all a fever dream? I'm confused.

Like all good science fiction, this asks big questions about life that make you think. I also appreciated that it was YA without romance as the focus.

Officially 3.5 stars.

The build-up made me too excited and stressed at the same time. I was second guessing every little detail and couldn't wait until everything was figured out! But the end was kinda underwhelming, and that's why it wasn't 5 stars.

Unless I missed it in my midnight reading, we never got an explanation for what happened to her dad, and the reason for the crash had me like... okay?

Okay, wow. This was really great. It's exciting to see this kind of science fiction getting published in YA because it's kind of a rare occurrence. Star Splitter is sci-fi thriller exploring ideas of personhood and what makes us who we are in really interesting ways. For instance, if you teleport and your original body is destroyed in the process, are you still you? Is it just your data and memories, or do you have a soul or something more than bits and bytes? We don't get easy answers and this isn't at all heavy-handed or didactic. But it is asking some big, interesting questions while also delivering a very satisfying inter-planetary thriller. It's also casually queer as the main character is leaving behind the girl she's been crushing on.

Jessica Mathers is traveling via teleportation to meet up with the parents who abandoned her six years ago for their science. Now she will go with them to explore a new planet with breathable air. Their new bodies will be written on a spaceship above the planet, lightyears from Earth. But when Jessica wakes up, she finds herself inside a crashed lander on a planet, with graves marked with names she doesn't know. Something has gone very wrong, but what? And now, she must manage to survive on an unfamiliar planet.

I won't say more than that, but this is told in a dual timeline that I think really works. Partly because both timelines have mysteries to be uncovered and there are some cool reveals. This was a really excellent novel and one of the best examples of YA sci-fi I've seen in a while. I would definitely recommend it!

If we want to talk content warnings, it is worth noting that due to the details of teleportation, bodies are termed "broken" instead of having died and there are oblique references to suicide required under certain circumstances. It's uncomfortable, but intentionally so. In keeping with the broader theme of what makes you a person, and with that what actually is death if your data is stored somewhere? But I really liked what this book did, and it doesn't speak down to teenagers. I received a copy of this book for review from the publisher, all opinions are my own.

I loved this book. It was well-written, engaging, and unlike any story, I'd read before. It was about questioning what makes someone human. I couldn't put the book down, and I have nothing but love for this book.

Star Splitter is an interesting YA science fiction novel that touches on the Ship of Theseus thought experiment. Seventeen year old Jessica is moving to space to be with her parents after they’ve been gone doing research for 6 years. Typical travel isn’t viable since it takes too long, but the technology used here consists of scanning a person, and essentially reprinting their body in the location they need to be. This leaves the original body an empty shell. This also means that if you’ve been “teleported” somewhere and you die, you don't necessarily cease to exist, since your scan can be used to create a new body for you. But what happens when someone’s body exists twice because of a duplicate print? And once there’s two of the same person, are they really the same person? While I enjoyed this book, I thought there was some odd abortion allegory that was off-putting. I also didn’t find the characters that great. There was nothing to like about the majority of them. Despite these qualms, this was an alright read: easy to digest, slightly thought provoking, decent pacing. A solid 2.75 rounded up from me. Thanks for the read!

Wow! This book completely surprised me in all the best ways and grabbed me from the first page and never let go. The futuristic setting and 3-D printing of humans kept me guessing the entire time; it was very well written so that I had no trouble understanding and accepting that the technologies were happening and being used by future generations.

The suspense kept me reading and wanting to get back to this book as soon as possible. The characters popped off the pages and had both good and questionable traits to make them feel real.

The events unfolding in the story made me question my own thoughts about human exploration into space and inhabiting other worlds. I questioned the morality of my own survival instincts--what would I have done in Jessica's place? Is self preservation more or less important knowing you can start over despite poor choices and possibly lose part of your memories in the process? Is abandoning other human beings just because they can be reprinted right to do?

Sci-fi fans are going to love reading this novel. The ending fit the questions raised by the plot and will stay with me for a long time.

This is one of the best sci fi novels I’ve ever read! I’ve never felt tension and suspense like this save from watching things like Alien, and the way this went back and forth between past and present seriously amped up those feelings. Every chapter ended on a cliffhanger and I was on the edge of my seat the entire time. I loved Jessica and her story and the author did a great job establishing the differences between the past and present selves. I was racing to finish and my heart stopped more than once and I needed to know everything right away. This is one of my favorite books of all time now and I can't wait to read more from him.

Thank you so much to Penguin Young Readers for sending me an early copy of this book! All opinions are my own!

OH MY where do I start with how much I loved this book!? It hooked me immediately and I absolutely needed to know what was going to happen next. It is such a wonderful mix of sci-fi and horror/thrillers, and I loved every second of trying to unfold the mystery and determine what was happening and what had already happened.

I loved the suspense of this, especially when it comes to the two different Jessicas and the way that her story evolves. It has such a deep message at the end, and it unfolded so well that it was made even more impactful. The plot twists kept me on my toes, and I loved the way that everything evolved and came to light. It still left questions, and I will definitely be thinking about it for a while after finishing it!

This is such a familiar and yet unique story within sci-fi, and I was worried at first that the teleportation aspects were going to be too much for me to keep up with. But I ended up adoring that aspect and loved the story as a whole. It really gave so many emotions from elation, fear, intrigue, joy, desperation, to so much more. I can't explain how much I loved this book!

If you're a sci-fi fan, please make sure you pick this up when it releases!

What if you could travel lightyears without fear?

I absolutely loved the concept of this book. I mean, body writing in space? Wow--what a great idea! I was intrigued from the first page that sets up the book so well, giving you insight into Jessica, the main character.

Or is she?

The author took such a unique approach to the narration, splitting it into Before and After, showing Jessica two separate states and how those worlds collided. Plus it was set on a space ship and then an alien planet so my scifi heart was SO happy.

I was really enjoying it at first, and then something happens and we also get to explore the new planet, and the solidified even more how much I enjoyed this book. It's a unique take on planetary exploration, how we see ourselves and how our experience shapes us, as well as the lengths to which humans will go.

There are a few unanswered questions I would have liked some additional info about by the end, but I also felt like the ending was a nice way to wrap it up.

I hope this author writes more YA scifi!

To me, while it is scifi and involves space, it's not in the same way other popular books have done so. It's very accessible and would appeal to lovers of contemporary with a tinge of mystery/suspense.

Note: There is a bit of language in this one.

My rating: 4.4*

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Thanks to the publisher for gifting me a copy of this book. All opinions are my own.