Cecil Castellucci

On their way to start a new life, Tula and her family travel on the Prairie Rose, a colony ship headed to a planet in the outer reaches of the galaxy. All is going well until the ship makes a stop at a remote space station, the Yertina Feray, and the colonist's leader, Brother Blue, beats Tula within an inch of her life. An alien, Heckleck, saves her and teaches her the ways of life on the space station. When three humans crash land onto the station, Tula's desire for escape becomes irresistible, and her desire for companionship becomes unavoidable. But just as Tula begins to concoct a plan to get off the space station and kill Brother Blue, everything goes awry, and suddenly romance is the farthest thing from her mind.

Tin Star

Cindy Lee

Thank you to Macmillan for providing a review copy!
This does not alter my review in any way

I didn't really know what to expect of Tin Star when I started reading but it has turned out to be a nice reading experience. Tula was one of the humans on Prairie Rose to colonize a planet but she almost got killed on the space station at Yertina Feray. Stuck there, Heckleck saves her and her journey begins from there.

I would say my favourite character is Heckleck. I liked the way he interacted with Tula and helped her settle in even though she was a human. They found true friendship and companionship within each other and that makes the story very heartwarming. Tula going about her daily life was also really interesting. The way she's so accustomed to different species' interactions and how she can read them is beyond me. She's a survivor, definitely. The pace of the story is not too fast and not too slow. There's also enough action to keep the whole story interesting.

But the romance kind of fell flat. There wasn't much romance. I would say either have it or not at all. Right now, it's kind of there and then the focus shifts away from it to action. I don't like the change and I find it really awkward. The love interests (or singular, depends on how you look at it) aren't really convincing and I don't like either of them sadly.

With the ending, I would love to see how the story would expand in the sequel. What made this book a great read was definitely the characters. I would recommend this to people looking for novels about friendship and survival.

Rating: C

Tin Star

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