The Weight of the Stars

Honestly idk how I'm rating this so low after a) reading the lovely heartfelt author's note at the end and b) really enjoying Ancrum's first book but I just.....didn't like this.

The jagged, mini-chapter writing style, which worked so well in The Wicker King, just didn't do the characters and story justice this time around. It meshed so well with the nature of The Wicker King's story—it felt like just another insight into the characters and what they were going through. But it didn't make sense to me for The Weight of Stars and its characters. I finished this book without a true sense of who Ryann and Alexandria are, let alone the side characters, who sort of just blended together into one amorphous blob of teenage rebellion and angst.

Nothing about this book affected me. Not the characters with sad backstories and sadder friends. Not the found family dynamic, not the space travel, not even the WLW romance. I just could not connect with any of it—the whole time I was reading this book I felt like I was being held a 7-foot-tall-person's arm's length from the story. There were words on the page about feelings but I didn't feel any of them. And the only thing I feel now is SAD because I really expected to enjoy this. I do still really appreciate Ancrum's books, and think they're important for the YA crowd to read. This one just wasn't for me. Maybe the next one will be.