Review: These Broken Stars

A cover that is actually 100% true to an actual scene in the book! Le gasp!

*I received a copy of These Broken Stars from Disney Book Group in exchange for an honest review.

Summary: Lilac is an heiress, a socialite, the privileged daughter of the protective founder of a company that explores and develops space. Tarver is a war-hero soldier from a modest but close-knit family, who is all but unaware of the ramifications of smiling at the pretty redhead across the room. When the spaceship in which they're hurtling through space suddenly breaks down and everyone aboard must flee to their lifeboats ("pods") a la Titanic, Lilac and Tarver end up in the same pod, crash-landing on a seemingly abandoned but strangely developed planet. They're the only humans in the entire world, but strange things begin to happen and secrets about Lilac's father's company are slowly revealed while the two of them struggle to survive.

Review: You guys, this book is what Beautiful Creatures should have been. What?, you're saying to me, Beautiful Creatures is not science fiction.

Yes, I know. That's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about the written-by-two-authors-with-two-equally-important-protagonists thing. This book does it right. Why, you ask? Because Amie Kaufman and Megan Spooner understand that with two authors and two leads, it makes so much more sense to tell the story from two points of view. I don't know how they broke it down, if one author wrote Tarver and one author wrote Lilac, or if they split it a different way, but I don't care-- because it's obvious that they worked together on this.

The chapters alternate between Tarver's point of view and Lilac's, but you don't have that sense of constantly being jolted between the two, right when you were getting into the flow of one character's narration. It's done cohesively, and the scenes are written such that it makes sense for Tarver to narrate this scene and for Lilac to narrate that scene, or vice versa. There are no chapters where you go, man, I wish I were in the other character's head for this part, the way I did for oh, 95 percent of Beautiful Creatures, wherein every chapter is all-Ethan-all-the-time despite the fact that Lena is by far the more captivating character.

But I digress.

These Broken Stars is not your average science fiction novel. It sparkles. It's sparkly. I don't know how else to describe it. And, boys, if you're reading this, stop making that face. Sparkles do not a girly book make. There are spaceships and aliens and soldiers and vast amounts of sarcasm here, too. The girl in the dress on the cover is just that: a girl in a dress. I've never known a boy to hate girls in dresses in real life, so I'll never understand why they avoid books with girls in dresses.

The characters in this book are few, I will say, but they are vivid and dynamic and they have so many facets that you don't need any more characters. Lilac is privileged and occasionally shallow, yes, but she is also whip-smart and fiercely protective of the people she loves. She knows more about the technology of her world than just about anyone, and she's an equal match for Tarver, the war hero who knows more about survival than just about anyone. Tarver is sarcastic; he doesn't respond well to stupid questions, and his mental quips about Lilac will get you through the first half (maybe less) of the book while the two still mostly dislike each other.

My favorite thing about Lilac is that she could have been entirely selfish, having been raised in a privileged environment where she was coddled by everyone who dared to get to know her, but she isn't. She is, for the most part, selfless-- and not in that Bella way that makes her entirely useless. She has intelligence to back up her selflessness; when she needs to help someone, when for any reason someone is counting on her for their survival, she knows how to handle the situation. Girlfriend gets things done.

My favorite thing about Tarver is that he can be both amusing and serious. After Lilac treats him like he doesn't deserve to breathe the same air as her, he thinks, "Duh, I should have known," but then he thinks about it some more and decides she does not have the right to treat him that way. He's respectful to her, but condescendingly so, which I love. Not knowing her motivations for her cruelty, he has every right to mentally complain and make jokes about being stuck with this girl on a strange planet with nobody else around. But at the same time, he expertly balances the fact that she saved his life before they got here with the fact that now it's up to him to keep her alive too.

As for the plot, well, honestly there's not much of it. It's a subtle thing that creeps along and builds tension and then explodes in your face (it's a contained explosion), but for the most part of the book it's a whisper in your ear. It's something that demands your attention, but you can't really say why. All you know is that you want to keep reading. And the romance? Not really a slow-burn, but not really an insta-love situation either. Tarver and Lilac just work. They're a good team, and once they get past the I-hate-you, I-hate-you-more stage, it's actually endearing that the majority of the book focuses on their relationship.

I don't know where the next book is going from here, but I'm sure it will take me with it. I hope it shines with the same subtle intensity as this one, and I hope we get some more awesome characters like Tarver and Lilac. Sparkle on, Starbound series.

★★★★½