Starfire

I received this as an arc from NetGalley. A stunning queer ya that shows that it’s okay to not be okay and dealing with mental health disorders such as ocd is okay. A beautiful read and would recommend to anyone who enjoys sci-fi, fantasy in a ya setting that presses on real issues in a wonderful fantasy world.

Starfire by Naomi Hughes

This plot is difficult to describe, and the plot summary does it much better than I’m going to. Peregrine Kent lives with his adoptive family in a world that lives under a dome the approximate color of eggshell, though he’s been having dreams of soaring through a sky full of stars. Then his world becomes chaos when fabled star dragons break through the dome and begin uncreating the world and the people in it. Driven by a need he doesn’t fully understand to meet the star dragons, he boards a submarine heading in the direction of a star dragon.

This book is full of twists and turns. It’s super fast paced. It gets going almost immediately, and stays moving at a good clip. It’s well paced and the plot line is really good.

I loved the characters. I identify strongly with Peregrine, as I have OCD myself and struggle daily with violent intrusive thoughts. (Prozac is a life changer.) That being said, like most books with mental illness rep, there are parts of Peregrine’s narrative that are hard to read, in the way that it’s meant to be hard to read. But I think it’s pretty well balanced, and while my heart was breaking that Peregrine was struggling so much with this, the book never feels like it stagnates in describing intrusive thoughts.

Anthem and Z are great side characters. They play off each other and Peregrine so well. I just adored them. They add so much heart and tension and spark to this story.

If I have a qualm with this story, it’s in the worldbuilding which is…a little wacky. The plot mostly carries it off, and most of the questions about the worldbuilding I’d garnered throughout the book are answered by the end. And honestly, the ride is so much fun, and the OCD rep is so accurate and so good and so needed, I forgive this book for pushing the limits of my suspension of disbelief.

Thanks to NetGalley and Naomi Hughes for a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.