I was so excited to read this book, and it absolutely delivered! From the very first chapter, the engaging plot and strong pacing kept me hooked. Cleo and her friends accidentally stealing a spaceship set the stage for a thrilling story filled with mystery, adventure, and heart. I loved the mix of perspectives, with Cleo’s point of view, an omniscient tone in italics, and messages and transcripts in bold, all working together to unravel the mystery of the ship, its missing crew, and their journey home. The found family theme was beautifully done, with Cleo, her friends, and eventually hologram Billie forming strong bonds. The romance between Cleo and Billie was sweet and well-developed, though a late twist left me slightly conflicted. Still, the ending was emotionally satisfying and tied everything together perfectly. This book was such a joy to read, and I highly recommend it!

I really really wanted to love this book! I’ve enjoyed a few lighter space sci-Fi’s & the representation in this book sounded (& is) excellent too! But I just didn’t mesh with the characters or the writing style unfortunately. The characters felt really juvenile which I couldn’t get past & the speech especially felt so forced, no one talks like that? Also I really hope TikTok doesn’t exist in that many years time, use of current social media I find really jarring? I dunno, wanted to love it, it ticked all my boxes in theory, but just didn’t hit the mark for me!

Solid "oh shit we broke into an abandoned spaceship and now it's taking off and we're in space, oh shiiiiiiiiiiit" novel with a friend group figuring out their dynamics now that they're in a small space for several years, falling in love with a hologram copy of someone you used to idolize, and some ~mysteries~ abounding. Some of the magical dark matter powers do enable a bit too twee of a resolution for my personal tastes, but this does seem to be trying to be a rom com so I need to give it that. Still a solid debut.

great ideas with characters that i could never fully get into. i would say the issue with this book is that the author spent TOO much time on world building and slotted in checkbox characters that never quite seemed to fit comfortably into the environment.

I really enjoyed this book! I loved the space setting and the mystery of what was going on and what was going to happen to the crew, and I really loved watching Cleo and Billie fall in love. It had such a great found family, too!

This was a BEAUTIFUL debut!
A queer mystery space adventure! Ugh so fun!
It felt more YA than NA, but it was heartwarming and fun!

A very BIG thank you to NetGalley, Avon, and Harper Voyager for this e-galley! I think this will be one of my favorite books I have read this year! I have been recommending this book to everyone who will listen. This is so well written I was invested straight from the start. I love a sapphic romance and one that includes spaceships, mystery, and silliness, Yes, please. I could not get enough of this book; I can't wait to read more from Emily Hamilton!

An enormous thank you to everyone at NetGalley for providing me with an eARC of this novel! I am voluntarily leaving a review, all opinions are my own.

This was an interesting book when all is said and done, it was good, but not AMAZING, if that makes sense. It’s one I’d recommend to fellow sci-fi, romance (especially LGBQTI+ romance) fans, but it didn’t hit every mark that makes it a 5-star read for me.

It was a debut, which does add to the impressive factor, with some great characters, an interesting villain, and more. Definitely recommend and can’t wait to see what people think!

Thank you to NetGalley and the publishers for this advanced review copy! I was late with this review so I actually purchased a finished copy from my local bookstore. I’m so glad that I did because it will live on my bookshelves as a new favorite. I thought this book was so much fun and filled with so much heart. Parts were silly but in intentional ways that I appreciated. I loved the characters easily and even though they did annoying things sometimes, it made them more authentic. The AI romance line was a little out there but I saw the ending coming once a certain point of view was clarified. I will definitely be recommending this one.

I received a copy from the publisher through Netgalley and voluntarily reviewed it.

This book sounded so good, so I was really excited when I got the review request for this one and hopped over to Netgalley to claim my copy. It took me a while to get to it, but when I was in the mood for a science fiction book I knew it was time to pick this one up. This story grabbed me from the first chapter and kept my attention throughout. The pacing is really well done and there's always something happening. I also loved the found family theme. And the ending just ends everything on such a high note.

Cleo and her friends accidentally steal a spaceship. Twenty years after the failed launch of said spaceship and the disappearance of the whole crew, they sneak into the compound where the ship is. And while they're aboard the ship, the engine fires up and off they go on a years long journey the ship was supposed to take all those years ago. The set up gripped my attention and I wanted to know about the ship, the missing crew as well as Cleo and her friends and how they would ever get home again. It kept my attention throughout as the plot progressed and I enjoyed seeing it all play out.

The plot was so good and well written. I am not always a fan of the main story being interjected with bits of info and other perspectives, but it worked so well here and I felt the other parts really added to the story. There is Cleo's point of view and then these often shorter bits from an almost omniscient sounding point of view in italics and then messages and transcripts from either twenty years ago or now in bold. These different pieces of perspective together advance the plot and the mystery slowly plays out about what's going on, what happened twenty years ago and more. It was so engaging and I wanted to keep reading and find out more.

There's also a romance going on that I liked between Cleo and hologram Billie, who is basically a copy of the captain who was supposed to lead the ship. It was awesome to see them grow closer and spend time together and fall in love. There is an interesting twist at the end and while one the one hand it made sense, another part of me still struggled a bit with it. I can't really go into the why as that's too deep into spoiler territory. They made for a great couple and I liked their romance.

I really liked the found family theme of the story with Cleo and her three friends who spend so much time stuck together on this spaceship and trying to figure things out. I liked seeing them interact and how they are there for each other. There are some things that don't go smoothly or some things that need to get resolved, but even throughout the rough patches it was clear how much they all cared for each other. It was awesome to see and slowly Billie becomes part of that found family bond as well.

To summarize: I really enjoyed this book. The plot was so engaging and gripped me from the first chapter and kept my attention throughout. The main part of the book is from Cleo's point of view, with another point of view in italics and messages and such in bold. Together they progress the story and more of the mystery gets revealed. The found family theme was awesome and I liked how much these 4 character cared for each other and then slowly for Billie as well. The romance was well done and I liked Billie and Cleo together. There is a twist toward the end that partly feels a bit off to me in a way that didn't get addressed, but I really liked these two together. The ending is awesome and hits the right emotional tones which left me feeling happy and satisfied about how it all got resolved.

Uhhhhh this was literally perfect??? queer and cozy and in SPACE!! I devoured every page of The Stars Too Fondly. I fell in love with Cleo and her friends, each one well developed and interesting in their own right.

Thank you to the publisher and net galley for providing me with an ARC.

This was a great sapphic sci-fi in a genre that can always use more diversity. It read as a little more YA than I was expecting, but was still enjoyable.

A delightful and unique sapphic sci-fi romance. Te Stars Too Fondly was a rollicking ride right from the start, with the accidental spaceship theft. The characters were easy to love, not despite their flaws, but because of them. The way they all learned how best to work together with their strengths and weaknesses was lovely to see. The romance was cute and sweet, and I liked how the human/AI relationship dilemma was resolved satisfactorily for all parties. The range of queer rep was excellent, and the plot kept me turning pages until the end.

So PRECIOUS.

This book is such a charming gem in the world of space operas and sci-fi fantasy. It's one part cozy intergalactic romp, one part frightening outer space nightmare (that the characters handle with far more grace than my anxiety-riddled brain could possibly manage), and one part cheesy-sweet whodunit. This absolutely precious Sapphic romance reads like the perfect mix of Legends and Lattes and the movie Wall-E. It's a dystopian space mystery that somehow maintains the feeling of a small, cozy world. A perfect book rec for a lower-stakes take on adventures in science fiction.

a space opera set in the not-too-far future that reminded me of The Aurora Cycle series and The Illuminae Files series.

a mission to move a human population to the planet Proxima Centauri went haywire, the entire crew vanished without trace, leaving only the spaceship. no one has been able to solve that mystery, and no one cared to send another delegation. twenty years later, Cleo and friends got into that spaceship only to find out more about that mystery, but suddenly the engine started on its own and so they headed to Proxima Centauri.

in a desperate attempt to save their lives, Cleo found out about the computer hologram that has the face of the original spaceship captain that went missing.the thing is, Billie--the hologram--wasn't really reliable and not always willing to help. but what started with barely civil interactions between Cleo and Billie turned into something bigger and deeper. on the other hand, Cleo's crew members started to experience something that couldn't be explained with the law of physics, and they decided to see through the the mystery until it's solved.

it was... mid. partly because a lot of parts reminded me of other series i mentioned before, and partly because i couldn't get the main couple's chemistry. also the the attempt to weave science with the conflict turned to be quite confusing.

Unfortunately this book didn't really work for me. One of the things I really enjoy about science-fiction romance is the science fiction feel, and while Hamilton spent a lot of time on technobabble, the world-building otherwise felt sorely lacking - the characters didn't belong in the future, they belonged in the present... probably on Tumblr. Characters use TikTok and debate the finer points of Star Trek Voyager as though this is a perfectly normal and common conversational topic. (It's not - even in the 2020s - and it wasn't when it was airing in the 2000s, either. Voyager never entered the zeitgeist in the same way as its predecessors and I won't bore you with the explanations as to why, but it meant that listening to characters bond over their shared love for Voyager felt like nails on a chalkboard to my little Trekkie heart: it was just too implausible. A niche weird interest? Absolutely. A common cultural reference? No.) We learn, clumsily, that a character is trans because they need their HRT. (Medical science hasn't advanced in that arena by 2061?)

It didn't feel like science fiction, it felt like alternate reality fiction, where someone was writing a coffeeshop AU of the present day but set on a spaceship. It wasn't my thing. It also was definitely not a romcom, but the comparisons to Becky Chambers felt very apt, so if you enjoy Chambers this may be right up your alley.

I stopped reading at 57%.

I have so many mixed feelings about this one.

The first thing I have to say is that I listened to this on audio, something I wouldn't necessarily recommend unless you had a physical copy of the book to reference. While the narration was enjoyable and well done, there were moments in which the shift in perspective couple be confusing without looking at the page itself.

On the one hand, I found the whole concept of Cleo falling in love with a hologram version of Billie to be a bit... strange. Yes, I realize this is a sci-fi story, and pretty much anything goes, but still there were elements of their love story that lost me, namely Hologram Billie being jealous of the real Billie (whom the characters didn't even know was alive). On the other hand, the twist that comes midway through the book, revealing the identity behind one of the POVs, got me completely reinvested in the story, particularly the love story.

Overall, there seemed to be too much going on in this book for me to have fully enjoyed it. While there was a cute love story, and a good collection of characters forming a great found family dynamic. I do think it's worth the read if you're a science fiction fan, however I think it would be best experienced as a physical or e-book.

This cozy sapphic sci-fi was so charming and wholesome! The dynamic between Cleo, the MC, and her friends felt so real and warm; they just KNEW each other and worked through problems together so well (I'm a sucker for found family dynamics, so I'm a tiny bit biased). And of course the romance was so cute; Billie and Cleo had such tender moments together, despite the odds (and oddity of their situation).
I almost wish we saw a bit more of Kaleisha, Ros, and Abe and learned more about them. They were written so well and it felt they had so much more depth to them than was written that it left me wanting to get to know them more!
Overall, this read left me feeling wholesomely snug from cover to cover, and I look forward to seeing more from Hamilton in the future!

The Stars Too Fondly by Emily Hamilton. Sci-Fi Speculative Fiction - adore. The completely out of place references to 1990-2010s popculture in the year 2061.....took me out. References to ihpones, Tik Tok, TVs while the constant repetition that the leads were these advanced hackers??

"Another outdated keypad, more old-ass software. Cleo cracked her knuckles and dove into the code. She’d broken more complex encryptions in high school. She deciphered the initialization vector in seconds...... Abe laughed. “They couldn’t have possibly accounted for you, Hack-ie Robinson.”

....a reference to Jackie Robinson in 2061 ......

DNF @ 10%

This book was not marketed, to the best of my knowledge, as a YA book, but that is what it appears to be. The characters are apparently supposed to be adults? But they are written like high schoolers and are extremely annoying. I'm unable to get past how obnoxious I find them and how implausible the entire premise is (ie, spaceship just easily accessible after being abandoned by the government).