Member Reviews

I knew within the first few chapters that The Stars Too Fondly was going to be a five star read. By the end of the book I knew it was going to be a book I needed on my shelf, a book I was going to scream about, and is 100% going to be on my top ten list at the end of the year. It’s one of the best books I’ve read this year, and as of the-book-before-this-one, I’ve read 315 books so far this year.

There’s a line in the blurb: “So, here’s the thing: Cleo and her friends really, truly didn’t mean to steal this spaceship.”

SAY LESS. PLEASE.

Sapphic space adventure rom-com with a strong found family component, a swoony star-crossed love story, and a diverse cast? Are you kidding me right now with some of my all-time favorites vibes all vibing in the same book?

Debut author Emily Hamilton seriously sat down and wrote a book that does what few books do to me more and more: Make me long for extra stars, because if I could rate this book six stars I totally would.

The book pulls you in from the start, with Hamilton’s ragtag group of queer twenty-somethings who just want to peek inside an abandoned spaceship and see what they can glean about the mystery of what happened to the entire crew, who disappeared with a flash of light on launch day. You know what they say: the road to hell is paved with good intentions. They messed around and now they get to find out why it may not be such a good idea to go poking around in strange, abandoned spaceships. Or maybe it’s the stars aligning just right and this was meant to happen.

The story is engaging, propulsive, emotional, romantic, poetic, and so well-crafted I wish I could shake Emily Hamilton’s hand and thank her in person. I cried more than once and I couldn’t tell you how much I love these characters. I just vibed with this book on every level. Can’t recommend it enough.

I was provided a copy of this title by NetGalley and the author. All thoughts, opinions, views, and ideas expressed herein are mine and mine alone. Thank you.

File Under: 5 Star Review/Found Family/Lesbian Romance/LGBTQ Fiction/LGBTQ Romance/Science Fiction

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Emily Hamilton’s "The Stars Too Fondly" is an intriguing space adventure with a premise that hooks you from the start. Cleo and her friends didn’t mean to steal a spaceship; they just wanted to uncover the mystery behind the Providence crew’s disappearance twenty years ago. However, their curiosity lands them on an unexpected journey to Proxima Centauri, with no way to turn back and a hologram of the missing captain, Billie, offering snide commentary along the way.

Cleo, who has always dreamt of being an astronaut, finds herself in a bittersweet situation. Earth is a lost cause, so perhaps this accidental voyage is a blessing in disguise. But as they travel deeper into space, the laws of physics start to warp, old mysteries resurface, and Cleo’s initially combative relationship with Billie evolves into something deeper and more desperate.

The book excels in its representation and the found family dynamic among Cleo and her friends. The diverse cast and their interactions provide warmth and relatability amidst the cold vastness of space. The mystery of the Providence crew and the strange occurrences aboard the ship add an engaging layer of suspense to the narrative.

However, the juvenile behavior of the main character, Cleo, often detracts from the story. Her impulsiveness and lack of maturity can be frustrating, especially when the stakes are so high. Additionally, the romance between Cleo and Billie feels less than compelling. While their relationship is meant to develop into something profound, it often comes across as forced and lacking the emotional depth needed to be truly convincing.

Despite these drawbacks, "The Stars Too Fondly" offers a light-hearted exploration of space and its mysteries. Fans of space adventures and found family narratives might still find enjoyment in this tale, even if the central romance and character dynamics leave something to be desired.

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What kept this really going for me were the characters, I fell in love with them. The author also did well at describing the passage of time. This was an interesting and overall sweet story that was a pleasant experience.

Note: ARC provided by the publisher via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

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I didn't connect with this title at all. I found the tone off-putting, the characters felt one-dimensional and I didn't care about any of them, the plot wasn't engaging, the romance fell flat, and the actual "science" of this sci-fi was lacking. The only real positive for me was that I liked the queer cast. Perhaps this was just a case of me not understanding the premise going in, but I was expecting something totally different.

Probably the biggest example of this for me is the characters, who are supposed to be adults but act more like teenagers. Their attitudes and conversations just felt totally off for what is supposed to be an adult novel. Maybe I would have been more on board if this had been a YA. Also, this is perhaps a bit nit-picky, but multiple times Clea is referred to as a "girl." Isn't she supposed to be in her late-twenties? Surely she's a woman, not a girl! Not only did their ages feel off, but Hamilton couldn't make me care about any of them. Their conversations never felt natural or believable (especially their arguments, which were stupid and usually resolved two seconds later).

Something else that I think contributed to the tone feeling off for me was all the pop culture references from today (or even references that are already outdated today) in a book set in the future. Every time it was jarring, and it didn't seem to serve the narrative at all. The one exception I would say is when Cleo and Billie watched While You Were Sleeping, because at least we got to see some character work done with it (something that was missing from most of the book).

Perhaps the core problem for me, was that I just didn't believe anything this book was trying to tell me. I don't believe that after accidentally going to space on a ship where the previous crew mysteriously vanished that anyone would reasonably be doing anything but spending every waking moment trying to find a way to divert the ship back home. I don't believe there's a magic machine that can make any food they want like a 3D printer. I don't believe anything regarding the science of The Other Place. I don't believe that after getting super powers, a hologram with no previous experience with super powers could train you in how to use them, especially when for some reason you all get individualized super powers and not just the same across the board. I don't believe that anyone would be stupid enough to try to die for a hologram, when we already know the real-life version of the hologram is trapped in another dimension and you are the key to saving her (and everyone else).

I feel like I had so many problems with this book, but I'll just leave it there. This wasn't for me, and I don't recommend it.

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The Stars Too Fondly by Emily Hamilton is described as “part space odyssey, part sapphic rom-com,” which it definitely delivers on. And doesn’t that just sound awesome?

Unfortunately, while I loved the potential of this book, the actual execution fell a little short. It felt like there was a lot of telling rather than showing, which worked at the beginning to set the tone. But as the story progressed, this made me struggle to stay connected to the characters. The romance between Cleo and Billie had such great promise of being this tender, earnest thing but wound up feeling sort of convenient.

Despite this, I did really like the characters. Cleo’s found family had a cute dynamic, and Billie was a great addition to their group. The witty banter between everyone was a lot of fun and I liked all their individual voices.

Overall, I think I went into this novel with too high expectations. I wanted to love it so badly. And while it didn’t click with me as much as I wanted it to, The Stars Too Fondly is still at its heart a cute, light sci-fi/fantasy romance.

Thank you to the publisher, HarperCollins Canada, and NetGalley for providing me an e-ARC of this book. All thoughts are my own.

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This book has space travel, discussion of a fourth dimension, dark matter propulsion engines, and some even more far out stuff that would be spoilers for the plot, and yet what I struggled to wrap my brain around the most was the fact that, in a group of people largely born in the late 2030s and growing up in the 2040s/2050s, why was everyone so obsessed with movies and television from 1996?? Absolutely encyclopedic knowledge of star trek voyager from every character, a show that would have been 65 years old at the time of the events of the book. Why are they watching While You Were Sleeping?!

I tried really hard to just let that go and focus on the plot but it did bother me a lot. I enjoyed the central love story, metaphysical love triangle and all, though I felt like all of the time jumps and different consciousnesses and log entries took away some of the emotional momentum of it. It just felt like this book had so much going on and none of it was really developed deeply or really thought through. I could see this being for fans of Becky Chamber’s wayfarer series, if you don’t think about the details too much.

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And there it was, looming over them like a skyscraper, steepled black against the starry sky: Providence I.

Twenty years ago, a crew was assembled and placed on a ship that had the newly harnessed black matter engine that only the chief engineer, Halvorsen, seemed to understand and was set to take off for an exoplanet that could sustain life. Horrifyingly, the world watched as their hope for an escape from an increasingly weather destabilizing Earth, was poofed out of existence, literally. As Halvorsen did the countdown and got to one, the crew and passengers disappeared. Halvorsen went into hiding and one year later disappeared. Now, in 2061, Cleo and her friends, Kaleisha, Abe, and Ros, execute their “Space Heist” plan and break into the facility that houses the spaceship Providence I. Only, as they search for clues to what happened, the heist is on them and the spaceship's dark matter energy fires up and they're suddenly on the way to the exoplanet. With the help of a hologram, courtesy of the ship's original Captain, Billie, who uploaded her brain into the ship's computer, Cleo and her friends will work to discover the truth of what really happened, traverse space and time, and fight for progress with love.

And four of them decided, idiotically, that if no one else was going to solve the mystery of Launch Day, they were going to do it themselves.

The Stars Too Fondly was a scifi story that was told almost exclusively through dialogue, leaving character development feeling not as there to me, thus bereft that I knew these characters. The first half is told a lot from Cleo's point-of-view, as she talks to her friends, readers learn a little about the world in 2061, how Earth is heading more and more towards desolate. There were also archived documents from communications between the captain and the chief engineer, with newspaper stories to create kind of flashbacks to let the reader on what happened in the past in between the chapters; while informative, I did think it hurt some of the flow for me. One thing that didn't quite make sense to me, the horror of not understanding what happened with the Providence I launch, is said to keep anyone from wanting to try such a thing again but the excitement of building it was also said to have inspired the new generation to all become STEM graduates? It's alluded that the companies are scared, so they see no profit but all these STEM graduates haven't inspired or gained scientific knowledge to build up a space program again, when it seems direly needed? I also struggled mightily with the vibe of this, the first problem, the characters were all late twenties but this definitely has a Young Adult feeling to it and the second, vernacular doesn't seem to have changed at all in the future. I don't know if this is a futuristic version of The Tiffany Problem, but “dude, slow your roll”, “pray tell”, and “It helped, she quickly learned, to think of the passing days aboard Providence I like a montage in an eighties movie— a training montage, a getting-the-team-together montage, a “dancing and sock-sliding through the empty rooms” montage.”, said by a twenty-seven year old in 2061 doesn't trip you up and take you out of what is a scific story, like it did me, then you'd probably enjoy this more than I did.

“My friends call me Billie.” The hologram blinked at her.

Once the ship takes off, you get some of Cleo excited to be on the space adventure and Kaleisha angry, because she had a good life on Earth and didn't want to leave. Abe and Ros are around but, for the most part, aren't focused on for too much of the story in the first half. The second half gets more scifi and we get more of it told from Billie's pov, I wasn't a STEM student, so the science parts sounded somewhat believable for a scifi fiction story, but I have no idea if they'd pass a sniff test to others in the know. The second half answers some questions with Halverson accessing powers from a different dimension, that he was warned away from and the consequences of his ignoring. Cleo and her friends get powers from the dark matter engine and those powers help them immediately, Cleo and Kaleisha suddenly can get the ship to jump in distance so the original seven years to get to the exoplanet, will only take a few months, handy. Cleo can also see into the past and future, with Ros getting some of that future ability too. It gets a little hard to follow in that way scifi can, but it becomes clear that Cleo and her friends are working with what gave the warnings against Halverson, whose disappearance gets answered, along with what happened to the passengers of the ship.

But anyone with half a brain— like, say, tiny lesbians with mommy issues and a fear of commitment, or starship captains who have lost everything— knows that love can hurt too.

The romance aspect wasn't filled out or developed enough for me and it's going to hinge on if you think a programmed hologram representing an uploaded brain can be sentient. Cleo and hologram Billie are snarky with each other and then a little into the second half, I guess that snark was love, not sure I can say I felt it. It becomes even more your mileage will vary when Cleo finds out what happened to the passengers and her and her friends fight to rescue them, bringing the “real” Billie into the picture. The ending gives us a battle (with an extremely found quick answer for defeating), a sex scene that felt forced in, and an abrupt back home. This explored different dimensions, profit and progress, and what constitutes love and it's power, but I think it got lost on its way more than landed.

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This is a fun dare I say it cozy sci-fi that follows a group of friends that accidentally steals a spaceship and ends up on a trip 20 years in the making. I loved the characters Cleo and Billy are definite favorites.

The plot and characters kept me invested from page one, and there are a couple of twists and reveals that were very surprising and had me loving the story even more. I loved that our group of friends got some superpowers and they had to figure out how to use them. I loved Billy she is snarky and loves Romcoms which they watch some of my favorites on the ship.

While Billy and Cleo's relationship seems impossible since Billy is a hologram, I still loved watching them grow closer and fall in love. This is a fun space adventure filled with friendships, romance, and saving... well I don't want to give it away. I had a lot of fun reading this and will definitely check out whatever this author writes next.

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I wanted to like this one a lot more but it was just okay for me. Unfortunately I didn’t really connect to the characters much which is usually what I need to get through a story.

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I loved this! Gimme all the gay space operas you can. It’s not every day you find a well rounded queer group of adults accidentally stealing a space ship and stumbling upon magic powers, but Hamilton’s debut pulled this off perfectly. The representation was sublime, nothing felt showy or forced, it just was what it was. The space travel, training montages and flashbacks were all done well that kept the reader entertained while our cast had to get from point A to B. The overall message of mankind ruining our planet and taking more and more without thought of others really hits home, as well as the importance of found family and how strong love can be. I found the metaphor of falling in love with a hologram cute and poignant as far as it not mattering what someone is to love them, I just felt the like to love jump happened kind of quickly and wanted more feelings before the “I love yous.” Other than that critique I have no notes!

Vibes:
Queer
Space opera
Mystery
Training montages
Found family
Special powers
Good friendships
Mature conversation
Science and humanity

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The best way I can describe this book is Heartstopper in space.

The Stars Too Fondly is listed as a sapphic rom-com and cozy sci-fi, but I really don't think that description gives any clue as to the depth and weight conveyed within the story. I really didn't find it to be too much of a "rom-com" (I don't like rom-coms typically, so this worked in my favor), and while I see where the "cozy" sci-fi comes from, there is a LOT more going on than what I would expect from something labeled as "cozy."
Told through a handful of mediums (traditional prose, secret internal monologues, archived conversations, etc), this book details the story of a friend group of queer young scientists as they navigate the stars in search of a spaceship crew that disappeared nearly 19 years ago. The pacing is a bit slow at times, which is why I think this counts as "cozy" (most of the story takes place in one setting). That being said, there is a fair amount of angst, which I enjoyed greatly, and the ending was much more meaningful than I think any true rom-com could've managed. I did find some of the plot twists to be predictable, but that wasn't a huge deal. I also want to note that some "sci-fi" elements read more as "science fantasy," which I saw as a main complaint in other reviews and while I didn't mind it, I do think it's important for people to understand this isn't the most scientific of sci-fis.
This book really emphasizes found family vibes, too. While I struggled a bit to connect to the main character, Cleo, and her romance with Billie (the ship's holographic captain), I was rooting for them by the end. Kal and Abe reminded me a lot of Elle and Tao from Heartstopper, but I thought they were neat as side characters. Ros was my favorite, mostly because they were mysterious, angsty, and done with everyone else's crap. I thought the villain was pretty well done in making the reader dislike them, but I do think they were "defeated" pretty easily.
The Stars Too Fondly is a sapphic sci-fi novel about a found family of queer scientists that balances cozy vibes with themes of the dangers of progress.
Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for the free e-ARC!

3.5/5

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Unfortunately this wasn't for me. The characters were annoying and hella immature. The writing needed a heavy-handed in the editing room. Thank you for the ARC!

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The Stars Too Fondly is THE sapphic space opera of the moment and the future.

A sweet and cozy sci-fi romance filled with disaster queers absolutely going through it on an accidental epic space adventure. The Stars Too Fondly begins as a sci-fi rom-com but evolves into a gut-wrenching exploration of the price of scientific progress.

I was immediately sucked into this book because of the new space age vibes, culture, and history. It's the not-too-distant future, and Earth is on its last legs. In a desperate attempt to find a new home for humanity, a group of ambitious and brilliant scientists, astronauts, and citizens disappear from the launch pad right at the moment of rocket ignition. The world is left reeling and confused. Twenty years later, a group of late-20s science nerds bite off more than they can chew when they break into the facility housing the cursed rocket and its mysterious dark matter engine.

A chaotic, unplanned trip to space ensues, and the found family group is forced to reckon with their present issues and unpredictable future while digging into the shocking truth of the past and what really happened to the Providence crew.

I loved this book - the dialogue, the banter, the pacing, the weird science, and the dizzying climactic ending. My only complaint is that many of the characters, especially the main character Cleo, are surprisingly immature for being in their late 20s. Even the computerized love interest, who is supposed to be years older, lacks maturity. Still, their forbidden, unlikely romance was sweet, steamy, and satisfying.

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Note: I received a copy of this book in exchange for my honest opinion. Thank you, NetGalley and publishers.

The Stars Too Fondly is at its heart, a fun space romp for every nerd who grew up with Star Trek and Bill Nye and learned to love science and be hopeful for the future. And then some of, hopefully not all, grew into adults who looked around them at the conditions on our planet and felt only despair. This is the story of one of those possible futures, and a heist to accidentally take a spaceship to another planet, and a love story along the way.

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Unfortunately I am going to have to DNF this one at 25% in.

This is a case of the book just isn't for me. I think this book would have made a great YA book, but it's just not working for me with the ages they are supposed to be. The characters are immature and the dialogue is not good. This is not my favorite writing style. Also as a scientist it is very hard to get past the bad science.

There have been some funny moments, but I just am not enjoying the book overall..

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The Stars Too Fondly is like a queer roadtrip book in space.

I will be the first to admit that I don’t reach for sci-fi these days nearly as much as I used to. I find a lot of it to be pretentious. The Stars Too Fondly is <i> not </i> pretentious or preachy or Star Wars fanfiction. (And I say this as a person who reads—and loves— Star Wars fanfiction.) And I think Ender’s Game really put me off the genre for a while.

Cleo and her crew grew up after the disappearance of the Providence I crew, each of them having been impacted by the crew at a young age. On a drunken whim, they decide to steal the ship from its hangar, but in the process, they end up launching it instead. Once aboard, they meet a hologram of the former (missing/presumed dead) captain, Billie. She’s a little bit prickly and snarky but eventually she and the crew form a friendship and work together to figure out the disappearance. Along the way, Billie and Cleo form a friendship that develops into more.

I highly recommend this one! It wasn’t overly techy or science, and the sci-fi speak wasn’t beating me over the head, demanding to be acknowledged.

I received an advanced copy for review. Thanks to Netgalley, Avon and Harper Voyager, and Emily Hamilton for the ARC!

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I received an ARC from the publisher in exchange for an honest review

The Stars Too Fondly by Emily Hamilton is a Sapphic sci-fi romance that plays a bit with structure. When Cleo and her friends, Kaleisha, Abe, and Ros, sneak onto a spaceship from an abandoned mission twenty years prior, they accidentally awaken Billie, a hologram copy of the captain of said mission…and launch the ship into space.

There’s something very 80’s sci-fi about this with the Fantastic Four-ish elements of a handful of characters getting powers from dark matter and love crossing dimensions that I really loved. I’m a huge fan of that bombastic, earnest, interdimensional aspect that 80’s sci-fi had so seeing it here, just as earnest and openly Queer, was a real treat.

Billie was previously engaged to man before he passed away and Emily Hamilton uses their relationship to directly address Biphobia. Before her engagement, Billie was known to mostly be in Sapphic relationships and when her engagement went public, she was asked ‘didn’t you used to date women?’and Billie’s POV reminds the reader that Bisexuality exists. As a Bi, this moment might be brief, but it is really important because it’s poking at a very serious issue regarding the erasure of Bisexuality and how society basically says ‘oh, you picked a side?’ or ‘what do you mean you’re with someone of this gender? I thought you were Bi’ instead of ‘congrats on finding a partner!’

Cleo and Billie’s relationship was very cute and leaned more romcom as they slowly learned more about each other. Billie loves romcoms herself, shocking Cleo because it doesn’t fit the stern image most people have of Billie. Cleo, on the other hand, makes Billie feel things that she hadn’t felt since the death of her fiance. I believed in their love and how they would still try to make it work despite Billie being a hologram and Cleo being a more physical person when it comes to affections.

I would recommend this to fans of Sapphic sci-fi, readers looking for a cross-dimensional romance, and those looking to dip their toes into Queer speculative fiction

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Emily Hamilton’s debut novel, The Stars Too Fondly is a space opera with a dash of rom-com and found family thrown into the mix, and it’s a great read for this summer. Our protagonist, Cleo, and her friends get stuck on a spaceship, the Providence, hurtling through the galaxy after a heist to investigate its abandoned remains goes horribly wrong. Once underway on a 7 year journey to Proxima Centauri, the group meets Billie, a back-up hologram of the Providence’s old captain who disappeared along with the rest of the crew twenty years prior.

With a diverse cast and a fun love story, this novel immediately thrusts the reader into the action and makes the 7 year space journey a perfect balance of action and character moments. Conflicts arise and are resolved, and even the intrepid captain, Billie, develops as a character. I found myself heavily invested in the developing love story, which held several amazing emotional moments near the conclusion of the novel. Queer found family and sapphic love story balance each other well, and Cleo’s friend group reminded me of my own.

I really enjoyed this book, it’s face paced and even though the characters are primarily confined to the singular spaceship, the setting is claustrophobic but Hamilton makes it work. The Stars Too Fondly is what I’d class as a breakout debut, a well-written, well-rounded story that’s well worth the read. I highly recommend it, especially for anyone looking for their next sapphic sci-fi read.

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The Stars Too Fondly, written by Emily Hamilton, is a captivating blend of a space odyssey and a sapphic rom-com. Hamilton skillfully crafts a suspenseful, charming, and joyous tale that explores themes of fierce friendship, improbable love, and the vast wonders of the universe. Once I started reading I was taken on a journey through the cosmos as I delved into this enchanting story that will leave you spellbound.

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The Stars Too Fondly by Emily Hamilton

The story kicks off with Cleo and her friends breaking into a spaceship and unintentionally setting off towards Proxima Centauri, a journey that will take them seven years with no way to stop the ship. With the assistance of a sarcastic hologram of the ship’s captain Billie, the crew unravel the mystery of the missing crew and passengers, and find themselves entrenched in a battle that will determine the fate of the entire universe.

This is a really fun genre blend of sci-fi and fantasy, and really goes to places I didn’t expect of this. The characters are all fantastic, except for maybe the antagonist who is … fine. There’s a few places where, it’s like I don’t follow the book’s train of thought, if that makes any sense. But the ride is so wild, and so much fun, it’s easy to forgive the book for it.

Iloved all the character dynamics, how the characters all grow and change with each development. The plot is fun, the mystery wild, but for me, it was the interpersonal relationships that really sell this book for me.

Thanks to NetGalley and Harper Voyager for a copy of this ebook in exchange for a review.

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