elatedbooks 's review for:

Light Years from Home by Mike Chen

3.25

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“So even if you have a noble quest, we’re still the collateral damage.”

This book is less sci-fi & more family drama which is not necessarily a bad thing but if you’re into this for those kind of elements I would skip this because it’s pretty much set on earth with only some baffling science references to alien tech. 

As a family drama though it does some really interesting things & the complexities of Kass’ & Evie’s characters were great. I also absolutely adored the uncertainty around Jakob’s story; I think that was a super interesting plot point & almost wished that it was true because the concept would be so fun to play with in a book. 

However, the main thing that impeded my enjoyment was Jakob’s character - I couldn’t STAND him. He was so one dimensional compared to the other characters as he seemed to have no internal conflict or guilt over the situation he just hyper fixated on the mission. So while he was obviously the most sci-fi-y element he was my least favourite part. Now I acknowledge that to an extent he was probably written as unlikeable, with some of his internal monologue being the most disgracefully callous comments ever in order to spark some kind of moral debate (family vs a sense of greater duty) but I don’t think a balance was reached or maybe I just intrinsically disagree with the author’s justification of his actions.