Gemina

4.5/5 stars. I'm in love with Gemina and wish I could experience it for the first time again. Amie and Jay blew my mind with this book.

Let's start off with the characters and their dialogue. I'll be honest, I hated Hanna and Nik in the first 100 pages. The characters screamed cliche to me, cliche in a way that wasn't even done well. I should've expected it as the characters were marketed as “Hanna is the station captain's pampered daughter, Nik the reluctant member of a notorious crime family,” but I just had such high hopes that Amie and Jay could pull it off. Then they did. I don't know what exactly the turning point was where I started to enjoy the characters, but if it weren't for surveillance footage guy making his appearance early on in the book I probably would've put it down and saved the read for a day where I could tolerate originally off-putting and overly flirtatious/try hard dialogue. Originally, anytime Hanna spoke to Nik, I felt almost out of place and it seemed very forced from the authors. It felt like they were trying to create characters that shouldn't even be speaking to each other (they couldn't even pulloff the forbidden love trope). Nik would constantly flirt in an almost self-deprecating way since he was aware he didn't have a chance of actually being with her. Nik felt much more fleshed out than Hanna even though it feels like we see more of her throughout the book. Maybe it's because Nik was expanded on more through text rather than drawings? This isn't to say that Hanna was a flat character because she was certainly far from that. She was a complete badass and I would say her and Ella are our true heroes (go ladies!). Ella was such a fresh character and didn't let her disabilities hinder her. She's hilarious and strong in so many ways.

Similar to Illuminae I really enjoyed the illustrations in this book. There were some similarities but it felt completely different and I loved it. Hanna's journal and her drawings were one of my favorite things about this book, Marie Liu did an amazing job with it. I also like the small touches on the whisperNET - the NETbar specifically with friends online, a newsfeed, and diary and appointments (Nik has the best ones). This book does a great job of expanding the Illuminae universe and does so in a way that's easy to follow. There's also drawings early on in the book that really show you Heimdall and the systems around it to give you an idea of things. Hanna and Nik's accompanying pages near the end of the book were done so well and reminded me of Replica's format. I'm really happy it found a way to differentiate itself from Illuminae. It was so much more creative than I imagined, after Illuminae I thought it would be practically similar. The pages with blood are still haunting me.

I love the plot. The story was great, it was like die-hard but in space. The cat and mouse chase they had going on worked really well, I just wish they played on the “alien predators” a bit more. I felt that I kind of just ended out of nowhere, maybe I need to re-read it? Towards the end Illuminae characters make an appearance and really tie book 1 and 2 together. Kady and Ezra ♡