A review by blankpagealex
The Actual Star by Monica Byrne

2.0

This ambitious book had a few elements that really worked for me and I was more engaged with the second half than the first, but overall this is not one that I recommend. I agree with others that the 3012 timeline was the most interesting and would have been more so had the author been seemingly uninterested in world building and instead forced the reader to rely on the lengthy glossary to have any sense of what is happening.

Throughout the book I kept wondering what feat Leah would accomplish in the 2012 timeline to make her revered as a saint 1,000 years in the future and we never quite get that. The intersecting timelines near the ending were impressively pulled off, but the fate of the Mayan twins in 1012 is seemingly far more impactful than a rather angsty teen in 2012, yet the the latter is more celebrated in the society that came 1,000 years later.

I appreciated a lot of the writing and there were some ideas that I found fascinating, but the execution was lacking for me so I didn't love it.