Book Review
Title: The Stars in Their Eyes by Kristy Gardner (The Broken Stars Book 1)
Genre: Science Fiction, LGBT, Romance, Dystopia
Rating: 3 Stars
The opening to The Stars in Their Eyes was interesting and confusing at the same time since it jumps between the past and present without much warning. Despite that we are introduced to our protagonist, Calay in the present when she is injured and her girlfriend, Tess is missing and she wants to find her. In the past we learn of an event called the Change, which as far as I can tell involves aliens coming to Earth and killing a lot of people. Tess and Calay have managed to survive for months it seems, although we don’t know this for sure and now something has separated them. Calay isn’t in the best of shapes to be finding Tess and avoiding dying at the same time which is highlighted when she has to jump off the roof a building to prevent being caught and killed by the military. Right now, nothing makes much sense but I am hoping I will understand more as the novel progresses.
As we approach the ¼ mark in the novel, Calay is trying her best to avoid other people as well as the aliens referred to as the Others. She does end up picking up a companion along the way in the form of a dog called Max and with him she is just trying to survive, finding medical supplies and food. They do have a run in with the Others but they manages to evade them without getting seriously hurt. By the time she returns back to her camp it has been invaded by someone else, a man called Jacob. Jacob isn’t threatening in any way just Calay is hostile towards him even after he shares his food with her and doesn’t want anything except somewhere to sleep for the night. Calay is hesitant to trust him which I understand but her mindset of fighting him or sleeping with him wasn’t really necessary apart from highlighting how alone Calay feels and how she is doing nothing to find Tess. Eventually she does end up fighting Jacob even though he never once attempts to harm him in any way and successfully knocks him out but the questions remains over whether she will flee her camp which is the only place she has left to retreat to or whether she waits and sees what Jacob does when he wakes up.
As we cross the ¼ mark in the novel, Calay ends up tying Jacob up and essentially leaving him to die defenceless which was cruel. However, when she gets cornered by some soldiers he is the one that comes to her rescue and even when she attempts to leave him behind for a second time she has to turn to him for help since she can’t drive a manual car. They end up finding somewhere they can rest for the night and when she wakes up in the morning Jacob is gone and Calay is far angrier than she has any right to be after the way she has treated him. However, we do learn that both Calay and Jacob have lost someone, someone who has gone missing, and neither are actively searching for them. Before Calay can set off on her own again Jacob returns telling her that they need to leave right now and I am assuming the danger is either more soldier or the Others. I really don’t like Calay as a protagonist as she is unlikeable in the worst ways, she treats Jacob so badly when he has done nothing to deserve it and even gone out of his way to help her when saving her from the soldiers and yet feels bad when he leaves her like she did to him before. I also didn’t like her whiny attitude about constantly being alone and yet turning away the one chance she has to have help and support from another person.
As we approach the halfway mark in the novel, Calay and Jacob do end up sleeping together and forming a little bond but I was concerned over the fact that Calay isn’t looking for Tess despite her claims that Tess is her everything. We are also beginning to realise there is a lot more to Jacob as a character than we have seen yet but this is overshadowed a little when both are captured by the soldiers that have been running around. They are taken to a compound and Calay learns that these people are calling themselves the Resistance and they claim they are fighting back against the aliens and they are winning but we have seen no evidence of this so far. Calay also notices that there are no women at the compound which is beginning to worry her especially since she has been separated from Jacob and no one will tell her anything about what is going on there or what is happening to him. At this point I am torn about believing the Resistance as they seem more like a cult that a fighting force against the Others and I am still really confused over what the point of the novel is.
As we cross into the second half of the novel, things get even stranger as Calay learns that the Resistance are more of a cult since they have been capturing people and testing them to see if they are Others. Calay passed this test but Jacob didn’t meaning he is an alien which Calay doesn’t understand but when she learns the Resistance are also capturing any women they find for breeding she knows she has to leave and does although it isn’t without its challenges. Jacob soon catches up to her despite her shooting him twice and he explains that yes he is an alien and he heals faster than her and he was sent to collect their people who had gone missing in an electromagnetic storm. He explains that Calay’s mother is an alien and her father is human meaning she is a hybrid but shows more signs of her alien heritage rather than her human heritage and they need to leave now. Calay agrees that she needs to get off the planet but she wants to speak to her parents first and learn everything she can about what she is before she leaves it all behind including Tess it seems. Right now things are becoming clearly but it is also clear to me as a reader that the author had no idea where she wanted this book to go so it takes so many twists and turns without reason that it makes my head hurt at times.
As we approach the ¾ mark in the novel, Calay and Jacob go to visit Calay’s parents only to learn that her mother was killed after revealing herself to the humans. Her father explains that from the moment the aliens arrived on Earth, her mother was trying to convince people of their peaceful nature but when the war truly began her cause was lost and she paid the price for it. Her father doesn’t seem to be doing well and this is highlighted in a dark scene where he almost kills Jacob. Calay and Jacob having a fight after having sex where Calay tells him that she isn’t leaving Earth with him and is still going to look for Tess and she leaves, however, she can’t leave it alone and goes back. In the barn she finds her father trying to kill Jacob and attempts to talk him down but he explains that Jacob isn’t human and isn’t safe and will take her from him. Calay tries to explain that she isn’t leaving but her father isn’t willing to listen to reason and despite everything she doesn’t want Jacob to die so she murders her own father before breaking down. This scene didn’t really have the impact the author wanted it because Calay’s emotional flip-flopping is giving me whiplash. If the fight scene hadn’t been included it would have had a lot more weight since Calay claims to love Tess and yet repeatedly sleeps with Jacob and admits she has feelings for him, this combined with her not actively searching for Tess at all means that I felt Tess should have just been killed off to allow the story between Calay and Jacob to have more emotional weight and impact.
As we cross into the final section of the novel, I don’t know what the author was thinking but that ending was insane and not in a good way. Honestly everything had been building to Calay admitting her feelings for Jacob and leaving with him which would have been amazing but the author continued to drag Tess back into the story when she isn’t even present for the majority of it and she serves no real purpose. Honestly, it felt that the author include the f/f romance for the sake of including since it didn’t change any part of the story and it didn’t improve the characters. In fact, Calay’s stupid devotion to Tess even after learning what Tess has done made her a really unlikeable character that I didn’t like or want to support in any way. The only reason this book got three stars was because there were some interesting plot points, it was fast paced and entertaining and let’s be honest, Jacob and Max carried the story. If those elements weren’t there I would have DNF’d this pretty early on.
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Paperback/Hardcover: amazon.co.uk amazon.com
Kindle Edition: amazon.co.uk amazon.com
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