A review by twistykris
Stars, Hide Your Fires by Jessica Mary Best

adventurous mysterious fast-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Plot
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.75

I think I went into this with too-high expectations. I saw it at the library, LOVED the cover, saw it was "for fans of The Darkness Outside Us (one of my top reads of last year) and Knives Out" and it just.. fell short for me. The only real connection I could see with TDOU was the outer-space aspect, and a tiny bit of Knives Out with the murder-mystery.

The romance was cute but much faster than I anticipated and felt pretty shallow. The representation was wonderful, but I would have loved to have gotten more about Cass's and Amaris' friends. The world-building left much to be desired, with lots of planet name-dropping without much context (and not in the fun Gideon/ The Locked Tomb kinda way). I predicted the killer fairly early on (not necessarily a flaw) but it felt so rapidly "resolved" in a way that wasn't very satisfying. I wished there was just... more to this book.
Expand filter menu Content Warnings