A review by nolemdaer
Edge of Nowhere by Felicia Davin

adventurous lighthearted medium-paced

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

2.75

The dynamic of this romance seemed fun enough at first, and then I realized it was a surprise age gap (which is supposed to be hot, I guess) and it became weird, because it turned into main character Kit acting like a surly teenager and other main character Emil responding with a beatific, vaguely paternal indulgence while also being thirsty enough to suck the Pacific dry. Awks! 

The characters, fundamentally, were a struggle. Kit was just endlessly rude and generally maladjusted and the story is all “he had a hard life” about it, which is logically valid, but really annoying to read — especially when the response from the love interest was more foster father than love interest. Emil also had the most frustrating moral superiority complex, especially about how a shady scientist on the space station was sleeping with one of his teammates. There’s even a content warning about scientist/test subject relationship (and none about age gap, by the way) — except it’s test subject in the way of “I signed up to have my vitals taken by the shady corporation I’m working for and then I started knocking knuckles with the evil scientist who takes them who is working for the same company and is the same age and level of expertise as me so the power dynamic is minimized.” And Emil is all “I CAN’T believe this dirty woman dares to pollute and EXPLOIT my poor innocent teammate who is a grown woman who can make her own decisions! Please forget about how I am an established scientist, thirty years of age and leader of this entire scientist team, and I am sleeping with a twenty-one-year-old who has no legal job or even a social security number and is currently being exploited by the corporation I willingly work for! Also every five pages we have to remind you that I am approximately five feet taller and four hundred pounds stronger than him! But there’s absolutely no power dynamic there, because we’re the M/M romantic leads and our love is pure and true!” Cup a hand to your ear — do you hear that? It’s me screaming forever.

The scifi setting and the worldbuilding around the state of space exploration and the concept of “Nowhere” (ie. teleportation) were interesting in themselves and capable of holding up an extended plot over the course of the series, but here it was so tangled up in characters I didn’t like  that I wasn’t thrilled by it. Overall, I think the series has a lot of potential to be enjoyable — the writing itself was fluid and fun — but the pairing made this one difficult.