From time to time I fall in love with a cover – hard, instantly – and I never recover from it.
You don’t know how much I just love the Alienated cover and how perfect it is for the story!
The story:
We’ve all imagine how it would feel like to be found by other alien species. For them to come with their shiny spaceships and wonderful technologies and change our world. We’ve imagined them destroying us (usually), or maybe, if we are in a good mood, we’d try to imagine things the other way around.. but how about cohabiting?
This book is all about humans’ reaction to an alien (in fact 3) living among them.
The Good:
– Imagining aliens looking like us, a better version of us – smarter, better looking, more advanced in all different ways; for some reason I like this concept, I wouldn’t mind it to be true, LOL.
There were many differences between humans and aliens in terms of living, eating, behaviour, history, genetics and so on, and I loved discovering more things about Aelyx and his kind. Also there were quite a few funny moments involving some of those differences and characters’ curiosity to learn more about the others.
– The relationship between Cara and Aelyx. They didn’t want to be paired together, one shadowing the other one, and the start of their relationship is quite rocky. But step by step they are learning to trust each other, to be intrigued by the other’s history and customs and through all the messy journey they fall in love (and it’s all so cute and funny, you can’t believe it).
There was this teasing and a bit of fighting and trying to see who was the smart ass of the two of them, all in the best funny way of course, and I found myself laughing out-loud so many times. Also the chemistry between them shouldn’t be left out of this review, as it was present at all times.
– The comparison with what happened not so long again in terms of racism.. and what probably still happens here and there around the world (don’t pretend that’s not true, ’cause closing your eyes won’t change anything). I found all that disturbing in a realistic kind of way. It’s true, in every scenario I could have in my mind there would be people adoringly stalking the poor aliens and people throwing pebbles at them. There would be horrible media manipulation and there would be casualties. Also there would be hidden reasons behind the possible alliance between the 2 species and lots of people being hurt when this would get messy.
– The supporting family – you don’t see this much in YA books and I really appreciate it. Maybe parents are not always the best (as the difference in age and thinking is not something that one can ignore), but I like to think that someday I will have a kid that won’t think about me what YA characters think about their mother. And this family sounds like a nice one to have (except for the brother that is mostly a clueless lunatic, or so I thought of him).
The not so good:
– Cara’s decision and show
– Friendship and respect – or the lack of those. It’s not that I have mixed feelings about her best friend and ex-boyfriend, is that I didn’t like them at all and I didn’t understand their motives when it came to any of their actions (good or bad)
– Love – Yes, Cara and Aelyx took their time to know each other, so there was no actual insta-love involved, but when the word ‘love’ came to light it still made me cringe a bit: they knew each other, enjoyed each other’s company, but still they barely got to kiss like once.. that’s not love. And after that, all their decisions didn’t ring right because they were based on that love.
Conclusion:
This is the beginning of what I hope to be a great series. I like the characters and the settling and I won’t even bother you with my love for the cover (God I can’t wait to have a copy in my hands!) and I am really eager to find out more about L’eihr (the alien planet) now that Cara is headed there.
PS: when I started reading this book I would have loved to have a L’eihr dictionary as well, as some ‘alien’ words were quite a mystery to me (or maybe it was supposed to be this way).
Happy midnight reading!
Early review: ARC received for review. Thank you!
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