A review by _persephone_
Soul of Stars by Ashley Poston

adventurous emotional tense fast-paced

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

4.0

I loved this book, but honestly I'm a bit disappointed. This book has a lot of the same problems the first had but a bit worse. The first is the predictability. Heart of Iron at least had an excuse for this, as it was a retelling. But while this is technically still a retelling, the plot to this book had no similarities to the movie, while the first book was at least loosely following similar events. As someone who has a track record for not being able to guess, even obvious, plot twists a lot of the time, I was able to guess a lot of major events and pretty much all of the plot twists. Despite this however I still was able to find a lot of enjoyment while reading so kudos to that. Another criticism I had was how confusing it was at certain moments. I feel like sometimes that was on purpose, and generally, if done right confusing your readers can be a good way to bring more surprise and suspense to the book. This is really hard to get right however and unfortunately it just did not work here. Instead of wanting to continue reading to find out what was going on, more often than not, I just wanted to stop reading. Despite everything however I still ended up giving this 4 stars. Why? Because I loved certain elements more than I disliked others. For every fault this book had that made me what to stop reading, there were so many more that made it so I could barely put the book down. The biggest thing I loved about this book were the relationships and how beautifully they were done. I found it a little too corny at times but truthfully I loved it even more for that. The platonic, familial, and romantic relationships were all given time and were all really well done. This book has a found family trope, and a really sweet and well done one at that. Ana and Robb were basically siblings and it came through in every single interaction they had. This book also has a lot of good representation that is done really well.

I was kind of worried there would be some 'bury your gays' action here but thank god I was wrong

. All in all this was a really good book that I would recommend a hundred times over and will probably think about for a while, but that I will probably never reread

Tropes:
-Childhood Friends to Lovers to Enemies to Lovers 
-Enemies to Lovers 
-Memory Loss 
-Human x AI
-Found Family
-Multiple POV's
-Retelling
-Forbidden Romance
-Royalty 

Representation:
-POC Main Characters
-POC Side/Background Characters 
-Main Interracial Couple (BWWM) 
-Main MLM Couple 
-Side Sapphic Couple
-Background Sapphic Couple (they only really appear at the very end for like two lines)
-Non-Binary Background Character
-Amputee Main Character