This was fun! Honestly though, the best part was how delightfully, supremely bisexual Cayo is.

The setup here is centred around Amaya, who has been working on board a debtor ship since she was a young child, paying off her father's debts by diving for pearls. When we start off, she has finally paid off the debt and can leave, yay! She also happens to rescue a mysterious man, and he agrees to help her get revenge on the guy who was running this awful child labour scheme.

So, she disguises herself as nobility and tries to get close to the son of that awful guy, Cayo. Just as much of this story is about Cayo, who is struggling to work through his gambling addiction, his sister is sick, and his dad's got some business problems. Plus his ex-boyfriend has his own gambling problems and wants Cayo to help him out.

Just as much of this book is about Cayo as is about Amaya; the chapters alternate, and there's a romance that eventually develops.

This book was darker than I expected. There's violence and death and some kind of shockingly awful things happen that I'll be remembering for quite a while. There were also a couple of plot twists that surprised me! And the romance that was slowly developing definitely felt believable, gradual, and not forced or out of place.

Also I liked the bits of mental health things that come up--in particular Cayo's difficulties with gambling. It was great to see that kind of thing thoughtfully represented in a young adult fantasy novel.

The book didn't feel like the most original thing I've ever read, and the worldbuilding in particular felt quite bland, but I liked the characters, how fierce Amaya is, and, like I said, how delightfully bisexual Cayo is. There's also a very minor nonbinary character, and I liked how this was smoothly welcomed into the worldbuilding and easily accepted.

I'm tagging this as fantasy since it's a made-up world, but it's another of these in the new style of "fantasy" with no actual magic (at least not yet). I prefer lotsa magic in my stories... Also can't quite sort out what the title has to do with the story. What do stars have to do with anything, again? I'm not sure.

But I would recommend this for sure! Especially if you, like me, are on constant lookout for queer fantasy!