Hello from a safe social distance, everyone. Just because we’re all (hopefully) at home right now doesn’t mean I’ve stopped reading. In an effort to keep our collective spirits high, I’m going to start this review with a reminder that you can still get ebooks from our Overdrive resource. Here is a link if you want more information: https://aopld.org/overdrive/
In addition to OverDrive, you can access thousands of ebooks from Tumble Books. There are plenty of resources for children studying at home, as well as genre fiction like romance novels for adults: https://aopld.org/tumble-book-library/
Whew, now that we’ve gotten that out of the way, let’s get onto the review…
This week, I’ll be reviewing THE SOUND OF STARS by Alechia Dow. Stars is a timely read following seventeen-year-old Janelle “Ellie” Baker and her alien companion, Morris, as they travel across the country to save humanity from complete description by an alien force. The kicker here is that Janelle loves books and runs a secret library from her housing compound in New York City while Morris loves pop music, smuggling the contraband songs away from his fellow alien overlords. The two meet one fateful night when Ellie realizes one of her books from her secret library is missing. It turns out, Morris took it. And our plot takes off from there.
The Sound of Stars isn’t a bad book, per se. I didn’t hate it and I certainly understand why other people might love it. I just..didn’t. Love it, that is. I didn’t even like it as much as I wanted to. Stars bills itself as a sci-fi romance, and I suppose it is. The science fiction elements are there in the form of an alien invasion and a mysterious vaccine, but that’s about it. Our aliens in question–called the Illori–aren’t fleshed out very well. We know they have a sort of “hive mind” with one another and run on energy (which they can sap from things like car batteries), but that’s about it. I found myself wanting to know much more about the Illori, but the author didn’t seem willing to give it.
As for the plot. I thought Ellie’s illegal library and Morris’s love of music would factor much more into the plot. It…doesn’t. Neither aspect. Not really. They function more as set-up tools, which is fine, but if much of the marketing around Stars didn’t revolve around the library and music aspects so much., I would have enjoyed the book more. Instead, I was disappointed. Ellie herself is a great character. She’s chronically ill, fat, and Black. Morris is fine, too, though I wish we got to know him more beyond his insistence that he’s “different” from the other Illori.
One very big positive for this book is its willingness to tackle big topics. Racism, chronic illness, and classism are all dissected here, though there are times I think Dow bit off a little more than she could chew. Ellie’s experiences with racist people in her neighborhood before the Illori invasion are thoughtful and powerful, but then we move onto another subplot fairly quickly Dow gives us so many sub-plots to juggle that readers end up dropping them on the floor. It’s frustrating, because I was really looking forward to this book.
Thios review by no means writes Alechia Dow off as an author. The writing was solid and the ideas found in The Sound of Stars are much-needed in YA fiction, but I just didn’t love this book very much.
Regardless, your mileage may vary! If you can, get a copy of the book for your Kindle or read a sample for free on Amazon! You never know, you might like it.