3.5 but rounded down!

Murder mystery, but set on a sentient spaceship?? I was sold the second I read the synopsis, and I honestly couldn’t wait to dive in once I had access to the book. There are quite a few books with sentient spaceships (either through some alien explanation or AI), and most of them end up being some of my favorite sci-fi stories, so I had high hopes going into this. Overall, I still think the concept of this book is quite cool, I just don’t think it was executed as well as it could’ve been.

One thing I really enjoyed was the wandering POVs we started getting around halfway into the book. I feel like it added immensely to the mystery, as it started giving us the pieces we might need to start figuring out what was going on. It was so interesting to see all these snippets of the characters’ lives and see them start to click together in the most unexpected of ways. However, this had the unfortunate side effect of making me less interested in Mallory, both as a narrator and as an MC, because she ended up being one of the least interesting characters for me. It’s also why I’m not sure yet if I’ll continue the series, since it logically will keep following her as the detective, and I just didn’t find her compelling in this book yet.

I also had a few issues with the ending, largely because it just started getting really chaotic. It felt like there were a bit too many things going on, and there wasn’t enough time to fully explain it all, so some aspects started getting a bit muddled. It felt like some of it could’ve been cut back a bit, because the mystery ended up feeling quite overshadowed during the actual ending. At the same time, these extra bits are what contributed a lot of the cool alien stuff to the story, so it’s not like I would’ve wanted to lose that either, since it’s a large part of why I picked up this book in the first place. I just wish it had been blended together a bit better.

My reading journey for this book was also a bit shaky, because I had a large slump of interest at around 40%. While switching to an audiobook helped, and it definitely picked up again, I just lost interest for a while. I feel like the beginning could’ve possibly been shortened a bit, especially considering it focused mainly on Mallory, yet still didn’t leave me feeling attached to her as an MC. The book does pick up quickly again a bit after the point where I got stuck, but unfortunately there was no way to tell that until after I’d gotten myself reading again.

Overall, I’d still say this is a promising start to the series, especially for readers who end up liking Mallory more than I did. Depending on the synopsis of the next book, I may end up checking it out!