A review by kittykornerlibrarian
Body of Stars by Laura Maylene Walter

3.0

I actually liked this and it is well-constructed, AND I'm feeling the pressure of having too many library books checked out and so I'm not going to spend time on a book I'm not really loving. And reading this makes me feel like watching too many episodes of the Handmaids Tale on Hulu, it just keeps getting more and more depressing and the characters seem so powerless. I normally enjoy books that center women in a dark fantasy world, and I'm sorry I can't keep going with this one. It begins in the tone of a coming-of-age story, with narrator Celeste describing her relationship with her older brother Miles when they were children. In this world, girls' and women's bodies are marked with moles in identifiable patterns that can reveal the future. Instead of giving them power, though, the marks seem to make them more vulnerable to various forms of powerlessness and abuse. I'm stopping at the point where the worst has happened to Celeste, because it just feels pretty hopeless and I've got a huge stack of other library books waiting. Maybe I'm the wrong reader. Maybe it's the wrong time. I do think it's a strong book but I'm just not feeling it right now.