The Stars Too Fondly has queer romance, found family, diverse representation, multiple references to Star Trek, and space travel. I love all of these things. I should adore this book. But I found it to be deeply implausible, frustrating, and full of undeveloped emotion, ideas, and characters. A really bad book is fine – I can toss it aside with never a qualm. A really, REALLY bad book that delivers its badness exactly as advertised can be a heap of fun. But a bad book that clearly has a good book trapped inside it – that’s maddening to me. This book has all the ingredients for fascinating explorations of climate disaster, space exploration, love in many forms, ethical quandaries, grief and loss, the practical details of survival and the emotional benefits of a found family. It fails to explore any of the issues it brings up and fails to be believable in terms of setting, characterization, and plot. Its one saving grace is that it has a lot of heart.

The book is about Cleo and her friends, Kaleshia, Abe, and Ros. They are a found family of smart people in their mid-to-late twenties. They are diverse in terms of race and gender and sexual orientation.

This is probably a good place to say that a vast percentage of the problems with this book lie in the fact that the characters are supposed to be in their late twenties but behave as though they are in their teens. The characters in this book and the decisions they make would be far more plausible and understandable if they were in high school and if the book was marketed as Young Adult. Should you decide to give it a try, I suspect it would work wonders if you to simply make this adjustment in your head and cling to it at all costs.

Anyway, once upon a time there was a starship called Providence. It was supposed to save the world somehow or other but instead of taking off, the entire crew vanished while the ship remained. So now, twenty years after the disaster, these friends decided to sneak on board the starship (which is just – sitting there, fully intact) to find out what caused the disappearance. That part could have been a cool heist story but we never find out how they manage to sneak on board the spacecraft. Once they get on board, Cleo leans on something and the ‘dark-matter engine’ starts on its own and they are flung towards Proxima Centauri.

Do I believe these friends are doing the right thing? Nope.

Do I believe that a spacecraft that runs on a only-used-once, groundbreaking technology engine is going to be sitting around where these people can get into it and start poking at things? Nope.

Do I think that Cleo is almost shockingly lacking in empathy and accountability when her friends express distress about having to be away from their families for at least seven years? Yes.

Turns out that there is a hologram of Providence’s captain, Billie, on board, with her full personality and memories. If you, like the friends in the book, are into Star Trek, then you are fully primed for this kind of character. Allow me a digression: I adore Star Trek and so does Cleo, but has no other media been created between now and the year of the book, which is 2061? Why does Cleo keep referencing While We Were Sleeping, a rom-com of which I am extremely fond but which is from 1995? Why are there zero references to media that might have been created in, say, the 2050’s? At any rate, Cleo and Billie The Hologram fall in love.

This is a science fiction romance. The science fiction didn’t work for me for many reasons, a few of which I’ve already mentioned and some of which I’ll mention later. There’s not enough science in the fiction, so to speak. Nor is there enough psychological grounding to make us believe that these people exist in the world they are supposed to live in. Cleo spent her entire life wanting to be an astronaut and now – she’s bored and doesn’t want to be one anymore? People who spent their entire lives preparing to colonize and explore a new planet just change their minds because they don’t feel like it? This is not the way people who dedicate their lives trying to go to space act! Consistently I did not understand what is happening in this story, or how, or why.

Meanwhile, the romance did not work for me because it is written as though it is a romance between two teenagers even though they are not. I couldn’t get past the contrast between Billie’s personal history which includes academic excellence, highly advanced leadership skills and experience, marriage and widowhood, with her behavior and speech when interacting with Cleo. Billie is fully established as a mature woman who has some life experience under her belt. When I say that they both act like teenagers, I don’t mean that in the sense that love makes us all feel kinda silly and passionate and wacky. I mean that even with Billie’s life experience, she and Cleo talk and interact as though they are in high school. Here’s an example of dialogue – it’s not terrible, it just feels younger than it should.

“I will do everything in my power to fix this mess I helped create. I promise you that.”

Cleo exhaled. The buzzing was still in her chest, but it had changed tenor. It was warmer, Cloe thought, almost like anticipation. “That’s – thank you,” she said.

Billie narrowed her eyes, but in a way that was closer to a smile, Cleo was quickly learning, than a scowl. “For what?”

“For revealing that you’re not just an asshole but an asshole with a heart of gold, which is way cuter…I mean – you know what I mean. You can hang.”

Billie also does not take on a leadership role, which seems at odds with the fact that she was the captain of that spacecraft. The romance does not build organically; it just seems as though they are in love because the plot requires that they be in love. And we are told that they are in love, so that’s that.

The book is optimistic in tone in a “love conquers all” kind of way. However, the optimistic tone of the book is undercut by the actual plot (at least, as I understood it – did I miss something?)

First off, the book sets up a crisis: the Earth is dying. Providence was supposed to literally save the Earth. We had this great new way of creating energy with the dark matter engine. We were also going to colonize a new planet. At the start of the book, the Providence disaster put an end to both endeavors and everyone is just accepting that the Earth will soon stop supporting human life.

One would assume that the remainder of the plot would involve resolving this crisis, but it is largely limited to resolving the personal problems of Providence’s former and current crew.

In world-building and characterization terms, this is a big spot where the science fiction fails. How is this looming apocalypse experienced by our main characters? They seem to have no lack of material items, no restrictions that I can recall on their ability to go outside, no environmental-related health problems – their standard of living seems quite high. How are they affected by global environmental disaster? How is anybody affected? What does the looming apocalypse look and feel like in practical, day-to-day terms?

Most damningly: what has actually changed by the end of the story?

Usually I avoid reading other reviews before writing my own, but my frustration with this book was so intense that I took a peek at Goodreads to see if it’s just a me problem. This book seems to be a love or hate experience for readers. People who love this book seem to like its overall affirmation that love is love. While I was unsatisfied by the way things wrapped up both in terms of romance and in terms of the larger story, I did very much like the sense that all forms of love are valued by Cleo and her friends. The thought of a spaceship crewed by a nonbinary person, a lesbian, a bisexual hologram, and a straight couple, most of whom are POC, gladdened my heart. No one’s gender or sexual identity is an issue to anyone else in the book – it is simply assumed that love is a good thing, which it is. For goodness sake, if you are able to accept this story on its own terms and be happy, then do not let my grumpy ass stop you! I wish it had worked better for me.