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A review by brokenrecord
Homebound by Lydia Hope
1.0
1.5 stars. Really didn't enjoy this. Often with books that have a high rating but that I didn't enjoy, I can at least see why others did, but that wasn't the case here, and I'm honestly pretty surprised it's so well-reviewed. It started off okay, I suppose, but I found myself increasingly frustrated with it as I went on, and pretty much only finished it so I could complain about it.
For one thing, I thought the writing was pretty poor — very clunky, grammar errors, etc. The characters weren't well-developed. Basically all the characters except the two leads (and I guess Gemma's friend Ruby) are just awful people/aliens with no real nuance. I was supposed to like the two leads (I assume), but never really warmed to them. The worldbuilding wasn't great. It's a society that involves a bunch alien races, and one of them (the Perali) appear to just be bad aliens who constantly terrorize humans and cause problems, and I just never really enjoy in sci-fi when there's an alien race that is completely homogenous and just Bad. There was no real sense of the aliens' cultures and how they differed, other than the couple tidbits we get about Simon's culture, but even that was pretty limited. Simon would continuously tell Gemma she was making assumptions about his culture based on human norms but wouldn't really tell her much beyond that.
Gemma was incredibly naive and fairly irritating, and the second half involves a lot of her being a damsel in distress. I also didn't enjoy the constant threat of sexual violence, especially because it seemed to mainly serve to give Simon a reason to defend Gemma and I guess make him look good in comparison. Simon was more interesting to me as a character than Gemma, but he was also very comfortable with killing humans and other aliens and the last section of the book involves Gemma realizing this and being like, "Oh Simon, you can't kill people! I'm a pacifist and I'm not okay with this!" and Simon would be like, "I don't care, you're all aliens to me," and then… that was it! There was really no resolution to that conflict! Gemma would just occasionally feel morally conflicted about it but then just… get over it? Like, "Oh well, I tried!" It was odd.
The romance was also not particularly well-developed. I love slow burn, which is what interested me in this book at first, but mostly because I like to see characters getting to know one another and forming a bond before they fall in love/experience attraction. There needs to be some sort of build-up involved, but there wasn't a ton here. The first quarter of the book is Gemma taking care of Simon for no real reason other than she pities him and thinks he might die, and then he recovers and starts talking to her, but their conversations are mostly him being terse and telling her she's dumb, so it doesn't really feel like they're bonding or getting to know one another. The kiss felt like it came out of nowhere, especially on his end, since you don't get his POV, and he certainly didn't seem romantically interested in Gemma prior to that, but then after that, there are random cheesy lines from him about how she's his purpose or whatever that really just don't feel like they fit at all. And on Gemma's part, it feels like she's only into him because he's the only male being around her who doesn't try to assault her or verbally abuse her (well, for the most part).
idk, I just thought this was kind of bad! There's also some casual ableism which wasn't great! I was very disappointed in this overall.
For one thing, I thought the writing was pretty poor — very clunky, grammar errors, etc. The characters weren't well-developed. Basically all the characters except the two leads (and I guess Gemma's friend Ruby) are just awful people/aliens with no real nuance. I was supposed to like the two leads (I assume), but never really warmed to them. The worldbuilding wasn't great. It's a society that involves a bunch alien races, and one of them (the Perali) appear to just be bad aliens who constantly terrorize humans and cause problems, and I just never really enjoy in sci-fi when there's an alien race that is completely homogenous and just Bad. There was no real sense of the aliens' cultures and how they differed, other than the couple tidbits we get about Simon's culture, but even that was pretty limited. Simon would continuously tell Gemma she was making assumptions about his culture based on human norms but wouldn't really tell her much beyond that.
Gemma was incredibly naive and fairly irritating, and the second half involves a lot of her being a damsel in distress. I also didn't enjoy the constant threat of sexual violence, especially because it seemed to mainly serve to give Simon a reason to defend Gemma and I guess make him look good in comparison. Simon was more interesting to me as a character than Gemma, but he was also very comfortable with killing humans and other aliens and the last section of the book involves Gemma realizing this and being like, "Oh Simon, you can't kill people! I'm a pacifist and I'm not okay with this!" and Simon would be like, "I don't care, you're all aliens to me," and then… that was it! There was really no resolution to that conflict! Gemma would just occasionally feel morally conflicted about it but then just… get over it? Like, "Oh well, I tried!" It was odd.
The romance was also not particularly well-developed. I love slow burn, which is what interested me in this book at first, but mostly because I like to see characters getting to know one another and forming a bond before they fall in love/experience attraction. There needs to be some sort of build-up involved, but there wasn't a ton here. The first quarter of the book is Gemma taking care of Simon for no real reason other than she pities him and thinks he might die, and then he recovers and starts talking to her, but their conversations are mostly him being terse and telling her she's dumb, so it doesn't really feel like they're bonding or getting to know one another. The kiss felt like it came out of nowhere, especially on his end, since you don't get his POV, and he certainly didn't seem romantically interested in Gemma prior to that, but then after that, there are random cheesy lines from him about how she's his purpose or whatever that really just don't feel like they fit at all. And on Gemma's part, it feels like she's only into him because he's the only male being around her who doesn't try to assault her or verbally abuse her (well, for the most part).
idk, I just thought this was kind of bad! There's also some casual ableism which wasn't great! I was very disappointed in this overall.