Audiobook Review + Amie Kaufman
First person, present tense, YA. romance / science-fiction. Classic recipe, and typical Amie Kaufman.
But... Published in 2026, this book is a bit of a let-down compared with her earlier co-op work with Jay Kristoff, especially the Aurora series, or The Illuminae Files.
No good
Lot's of logic mistakes, some plot holes, unplausible technology, and extremely predictable.
Here's an example: a space base gets evacuated because of some biological contamination. But... why? It's a space base in a hostile environment. It stands to reason it is can be split up in many independent compartments to handle severe breaches. Further down in the same story it is actually including trapdoors being dropped to isolate sections from one another. But no, the plot requires the whole base's population to be leaving the base, and so they leave.
Naive. Simplistic. Events happen because they suit the plot, not because they make sense. All in all, this just isn't good enough. This could have used a very, very tough rewrite, perhaps a better co-writer, or perhaps it should have been dropped into the wastebin before reaching a publisher...
Yes. I know I'm not the target audience, but I believe readers deserve something better than this.
I do like the cover, but that's about it.
Narration
Fine, fine. Over the top, but the whole book was a little annoying, so the peppy narration... matched.
The Verdict
Was this written against a deadline? Is it an older work? Or does Amie Kaufman - as a standalone author - need a counterpart to bring out the good stuff? My verdict may be harsh, but then again I am somewhat disappointed.
And my verdict is...? Skip. You can do better. (And so can Amie Kaufman.)
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