Reviews

In a dystopian world where children are trained to become astronauts in their teens, protagonist June is a precocious, self-centered, thoughtless child who grows into a hubristic, self-centered, thoughtless, and reckless adult. Driven to show that she is always, always right and better, June rejects the critical necessity of teamwork in engineering in order to follow her own agenda, leading to the ends of others' careers and health. In addition to having one of the least sympathetic narrators I've ever read, this book offers a view of engineering and science that is completely antithetical to the way those things should work. Engineers are unethical, withholding vital information; they keep deadly secrets in space; they behave like children. Perhaps this is intended as a cautionary tale about what happens when we let the cult of genius aggrandize itself unchecked, but I think the author genuinely thinks this is all heroic or realistic or something. Want good books about women in space? Go read The Calculating Stars and its sequels instead.

lizal33's review against another edition

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2.0

I am really not sure what to make of this book. It’s almost like a series of vignettes, moreso than a cohesive novel. At only 250-ish pages, that’s kind of an odd construction. It’s both too long and too short at the same time, and don’t even get me started on the really jarring Jane Eyre allusion. Just extremely strange.

emmysnook's review against another edition

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2.0

What the heck. Very slow start then basically became Jane Eyre in space really didn’t see why June cares about James at all man locked his ex in a closet.

jwford's review against another edition

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adventurous mysterious medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.5

When I put down this book for the final time, I said out loud to myself, "...it was fine?"

I think the first 50%-75% was pretty strong; Kate Hope Day did a wonderful job of letting the reader inhabit the protagonist's mind, and I loved experiencing the story with June. With that being said, however, the plot of this book left much to be desired. The romance of the back half comes thundering in out of nowhere and never really seems believable, and the entire book builds to an ending that we never actually get to see.

Not a terrible book by any means, but I was left disappointed.

pelargonia's review against another edition

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adventurous hopeful medium-paced

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

2.5

the_tashystation's review against another edition

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5.0

I read this a year ago and I still think about it all the time.

hellativity's review against another edition

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There were so many things I didn't like about this book. I didn't expect to spend so much time reading about a 12-year-old prodigy at Engineering Genius Boarding School. I didn't love sorting through sentences to figure out which ones were dialogue and which were narration. And the late-in-the-book romance (?) arc made me wildly uncomfortable the whole time.

While I loved the tone and writing style at times, and it was refreshing to see characters who were energized by working on science together, I went into this book expecting to see some representation of my experiences as a woman in aerospace engineering, and I instead ended up annoyed most of the time.

But hey I did read it in 5 days and write 3 pages about it in my book journal, so it definitely made me feel something!

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