I think my rating for this book is 100% due to the fact that I might be outgrowing YA sci-fi a bit, and I'm just not exactly the perfect audience for this anymore. While I still love my YA, I just notice more and more that there are some books that are definitely just aimed at a younger audience, and don't always work for me anymore. I feel like I would've loved this when I was still in high school.

I honestly loved the pretense and concept of this book, and I loved that this sci-fi has actual variations of aliens that are diverse in how they view the world. Ever since reading books like Becky Chambers' Wayfarers series, I just always notice when aliens are just, off-brand humans. It always kills sci-fi books for me because it seems so unrealistic that aliens would look and think close to how we do, so I enjoy when a book thinks about how other societies and species may have developed and evolved, and how their customs might be different. (It's also always a plus when those aliens aren't forced to conform to the same binary gender standard humans do, because once again, it's very unlikely they'll all have the same ideas on that as us).

I also enjoyed where the plot went, and how it explored why this world was the way it was, and what hands (metaphorically or literally) may have played a role in the way it was shaped and formed. While I do feel the villains were a bit too obviously evil at points (yes, we get it, you think everyone that is unlike you is inferior, you don't have to say it every two seconds), the discussions that were brought up in terms of what do we recognize as equal to us, in terms of alien life, were interesting.

Unfortunately, even though there was so much alien stuff going on, there was still an annoying focus on humans. While our main character herself isn't necessarily human, she mainly spends time with other humans, even on board her alien spaceship. More characterization was given to these human characters as well, making them feel like fully fledged characters, while the aliens felt more like oddities, instead being described by what made them different as a species from humans instead of their individual personalities and traits. The human characters almost all received romances between each other, hopes and dreams for the future, while when it came to aliens, all we got was wikipedia style facts. It made it feel like there was a clear division between humans and aliens, instead of them feeling like a single crew or family.

On the same subject of describing aliens, I also just didn't vibe with how we were given information about different alien species and the history of this connected universe. I feel like again this is where I made comparisons with Becky Chambers, as both authors give us a wealth of information about the aliens in order to build a fuller picture of the world the story takes place in. However, Chambers delivers the information in a more lasting way, connecting it more to the story itself, where in this story, it was more Tina spouting out whatever information came to her head when faced with an alien. It didn't usually have anything to do with the characterization of that particular alien or the ongoing plot. It meant most of the information didn't really stick beyond a specific scene, and I left the book still not being able to really name species or their specific customs.

There was also a lot of repetition for such a short book, and I felt like Tina kept having the same conversations in her head and with her friends. It made the short book feel quite long, and it honestly started dragging a lot by the end.

Overall, I didn't hate the book at all, but it just wasn't for me. I did like what it was trying to do, but it didn't fully work for me.