SPINNING STARLIGHT by R.C. Lewis

Rating: B
Synopsis:
Sixteen-year-old heiress and paparazzi darling Liddi Jantzen hates the spotlight. But as the only daughter in the most powerful tech family in the galaxy, it's hard to escape it. So when a group of men shows up at her house uninvited, she assumes it's just the usual media-grubs. That is, until shots are fired. Liddi escapes, only to be pulled into an interplanetary conspiracy more complex than she ever could have imagined. Her older brothers have been caught as well, trapped in the conduits between the planets. And when their captor implants a device in Liddi's vocal cords to monitor her speech, their lives are in her hands: One word, and her brothers are dead. Desperate to save her family from a desolate future, Liddi travels to another world, where she meets the one person who might have the skills to help her bring her eight brothers home—a handsome dignitary named Tiav. But without her voice, Liddi must use every bit of her strength and wit to convince Tiav that her mission is true. With the tenuous balance of the planets deeply intertwined with her brothers' survival, just how much is Liddi willing to sacrifice to bring them back? Haunting and mesmerizing, this retelling of Hans Christian Andersen's The Wild Swans fuses all the heart of the classic tale with a stunning, imaginative world in which a star-crossed family fights for its very survival.

My thoughts on the book:
I absolutely loved Stitching Snow by this author, and when I saw that a companion novel was coming out, I couldn't wait to get my hands on it. Spinning Starlight did not disappoint. Some of the writing choices the author made didn't really appeal to me, but overall, I really enjoyed the book. I liked the characters a lot, and they grew throughout the story. The pacing was pretty spot on, and the world-building was fantastically done. I hope that Lewis decides to write more fairy tale retellings. 

Liddi was a great leading character and narrator. She was incredibly strong and reliable. She had some hang ups about herself, but that just made her that much more realistic. She had some tough things to go through and some difficult decisions to make, and I think she did her best with the hand she was dealt. Also, she was super smart, and I liked that a lot. We need more highly intelligent female heroines. Tiav was a great love interest. He was her equal and supported her. He didn't act all caveman crazy about things, and he gave her space to do what she needed to do. The rest of the characters weren't focused on much, but they all seemed okay. I wish we could have gotten to know the brothers better. I mean we got flashes of them in the flashbacks, but I didn't feel super attached to any of them. 

The pacing was pretty spot on with this book, and I wasn't bored at all. I really wasn't a fan of the flashbacks. I get why they were there, so we'd care about who Liddi was trying to rescue, but they really broke up the story and made things kind of clunky at times. However, Lewis' world-building was amazing. I could fully picture each of the planets that we visited with Liddi. Also, I really loved the idea of a sci-fi version of a fairy tale. That was a lot of fun. The ending made me cry a little bit, but that just means this was a good book. 

Overall, I'd recommend this novel to anyone who loves sci-fi and/or fairy tales. Lewis is an excellent author, and you don't want to miss out on these stories.

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