Unfortunately this was a miss for me.

Based on the title, cover and comps (SA Barnes and Cass Khaw) I was expecting space horror, but we spent the first 50% of the book on the chaotic toxic relationship between two women, who don't seem to have ever loved each other.

The world building is creative, but also left me questioning things. Another colony attacks and critically damages items in the main colony, but there are still fancy restaurants where you have to pay extra for bread. There's a real concern that the planet is going to kill all the humans, but we still have time to arrange a funeral including providing food and having small talk.

This probably would have benefited from being a longer book, so that the author could fully flesh out the setting, plot and characters in a more cohesive way.

Thank you Netgalley, the publisher, and the author for allowing me an audiobook arc of this book. Unfortunately, the premise sounded very interesting, but ultimately was very dull. It took about 50% into the audiobook for anything interesting to happen as the first half was mainly about the two women's relationship and the drama that ensued from repopulation measures. Even when something interesting happened after the 50% mark, the melodrama found its way back to the forefront to take anything interesting away. The characters were also dull, with not enough personality to really develop any care about them. I know this is a short book, but it could really be changed to be more action-packed in a tiny amount than just focus on the drama for most of the book.

I received an early copy of this audiobook from NetGalley and HighBridge Audio.

I enjoyed the narration by Catherine Ho. She does a great job of changing her voice to distinguish which characters are talking. I find her pace of reading and voice very enjoyable to listen to.

I feel torn on how to review this book. The first half of the book is more of a domestic drama than a horror story. For me personally I enjoyed the last half of the book a lot, but the first half I found myself losing interest. I almost wish this had been longer so the characters could have been more developed. With such a strong focus on their relationships with one another I would have liked to have more a connection to the characters than I did. When the horror elements of the story came into focus is when I felt much more invested in this book, and I enjoyed the body horror elements as they are well written. If the entire book had been like the second half this would have easily been 4 stars for me. Overall I look forward to reading more from Kemi Ashing-Giwa and seeing what she does with a longer story.

In it's short run time this book manages to deliver atmosphere, backstory, and body horror with a touch of commentary of the lengths some people will go to for obsessions.

Skin crawling sci-fi of the best kind!

*ARC provided by NetGalley & HighBridge Audio*

This audiobook was made available for me to listen to and review by Kemi Ashing-Giwa, HighBridge Audio, and NetGalley.

This audiobook is narrated by Catherine Ho. Catherine creates a creepy atmosphere narrating this haunting story. This is told from multiple points of view and the narration seemed to fade into the background. It was exactly what I wanted with this novella.

I quite liked this. It's definitely science fiction and I wished I had more time on New Belaforma. I truly loved the descriptions of the planet and the 'Grey'. I liked the premise of the story which I don't want to spoil here. The science aspects of the story are unique and incredible. The relationship aspects of the story felt forced. Perhaps due to the limitations of the novella format. 🤷🏾‍♀️

Thank you to Kemi Ashing-Giwa, HighBridge Audio, and NetGalley for the opportunity to listen to and review this audiobook. All opinions and viewpoints expressed in this review are my own.

Queer sci-fi horror is one of my current favorite genres and this looked really interesting! This wasn’t exactly the kind of horror I was expecting though.

The story follows Vinh, Amara, and Jessie as they work on a colony formed on a new planet with interesting and befuddling nature. Between that and the synopsis comparing this to an SA Barnes novel, I was expecting more of the creepy, atmospheric horror. To me though, the main horror was the fact that when the colony is sabotaged by another colony, the Vinh and Amara are assigned male counterparts to ensure that there descendants to continue on. Pregnancy really freaks me out, forced pregnancy even more so. That doesn’t happen in this book, but I was waiting for it the whole time. I know that this is part of the horror element of this book, but it wasn’t what I was expecting going in to it, especially since I usually avoid pregnancy and especially in horror books, and felt a bit misleading.

Overall I don’t feel like it lived up to the blurbs or synopsis, but the cover on its own is incredibly unnerving and fitting.

Thank you to NetGalley for making this available in exchange for an honest review!