Reviews

A Wilderness of Stars by Shea Ernshaw

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lexie_b29's review against another edition

5.0

Every time I read a Shea book it becomes another favourite. I hesitated to pick this one up because it didn’t sound like my kind of book but I adored it. It plays with genre in a way that made it accessible to me. Great characters, another amazing twist, so much mystery and rich setting, peril and adventure and just the sweetest slow burn romance. I inhaled it, so much so that I didnt even notice how abnormally long the chapters were. Loved every moment.

chiantechick's review against another edition

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adventurous hopeful slow-paced

Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No

3.75

ashwhit2024's review against another edition

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adventurous dark emotional mysterious tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

3.25

pageswithrachel's review against another edition

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mysterious slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

2.0

wynterayn's review against another edition

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adventurous mysterious slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

3.5

lunafreya03's review against another edition

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adventurous medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.5

sxl04260's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging dark mysterious tense slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? No

2.0

Not a “magical romance” as the book description states.

Slow paced. Finished feeling… confused. The entire book reads as a mystery, where even though the plot isn’t all that engaging, you need to solve this bizarre mystery (because it makes no sense). So I swallowed this book in < 3 days, the “need to know” being the only really driving force for finishing it.

Some thoughts…

It is extremely slow paced, and is hard to gauge how much time/distance has passed as they trek through the continent. A map might’ve been helpful… without further context, I was imagining something like the US, huge and virtually impossible to trek on foot & on horse.
Too much italics, and too much repetition, both within scenes and overall in the story. Such as variations on “Out of time”, “running out of time”, “hurry”, “theres not enough time”, but thru the whole story. It was definitely a sense of urgency in the beginning, but this constant state of urgency made it seem absolutely unattainable and I lost the excitement.
on this note, the most important component for a story is its believability~ if I cannot follow the events, or if everything seems ridiculously unlikely, I lose the story. This includes
growing up isolated from anyone else, but knowing how to be around others; trekking for literal days/weeks without proper equipment or provisions and not dying??; no water walking thru the desert for days, and the sun hadn’t burned your skin off?;
.
Plot vs romance. I did not understand the romance at all. Perhaps it was a ‘mates’ sort of situation, destined to be together, but I was having trouble buying into that. I feel the story would’ve been identical if it was a strong platonic, sense-of-belonging relationship. I just could not get behind the kisses.
The planet is about to explode.
Further regarding believability- I don’t like the plot line of
the Theorists chasing after these kids.
It was hard to follow, popped up just when you were starting to focus on something else, and was kind of irritating. And it was hard to believe that a large group of adult men with food and horses were unable to catch/had to keep trailing behind them?
You’re telling me (and all of it was unrealistic, here’s just one) that harrowing mountain pass experience ( no one should’ve survived anyway), the men were just right behind them? Where? We didn’t see any fires?
Finally, though I have many thoughts, the characters seemed flat. Some of them were dynamic and dimensional, but not the main ones. Constant secrets, esp kept from the reader, makes it harder to connect with you and encourage you to survive. I didn’t care all that much what happened to anyone.
And, stop doing stupid stuff. Some of the main characters actions made no sense- even if she acknowledged some of them.