jessdrafahl's Reviews (154)

I think that this was objectively good, but it was very far from being something I liked.

So sweet! I loved how every part of this book took place inside the cafe. I was pleasantly surprised that in such a short novel, too, there's a lot to learn and love about the cast of characters. On top of that, too, their stories all intertwine together to form this stellar read.

I also sobbed my eyes out about half way through the story.

Fun! Hera and Kanan definitely feel younger in this book than they do in Rebels, but that makes sense. They are younger. Besides that, they seem true to form. The other characters were also fleshed out and fun to read. Their relationships all felt very natural. I wish that Chopper was even mentioned, but that’s a minor wish. 

There’s nothing wrong with this book, per se, but the only original story in this book was “Bug.” The other stories, even as re-hashes of some great Clone Wars episodes, weren’t drawn out or expanded upon to make them interesting. It was just kind of…meh. 

A really fun book, but it suffers the same issues as the first one: a lack of oversight that hinders the book's greatness. First, the stories in this book tended to contradict each other. Not as bad as it did in the first one, but the inconsistencies are still there. Secondly, a huge number of the stories took place on Hoth. I could only read so much about Hoth before I started to get bored.

That being said, this had one of my favorite Star Wars stories: "There is Always Another" by Mackenzi Lee was very good. It was the source of some great quotes:

and

There are some really, really good stories in this anthology. Then there are some not-so-good stories. The most frustrating thing about this book was how often some of the stories contradicted themselves (ie in one story, there weren’t enough X-Wings for all the pilots, but two stories later, there weren’t enough pilots for all the X-Wings…a bit frustrating. Wish there was more oversight.) Furthermore, a lot of them focused on very specific parts of the story. For example, a large section of the book talked about the Cantina. So many stories and characters and the same bounty-hunter trope that it started to get quite boring. That being said, you can really tell that this book was an act of love for the Star Wars series. And this really does have some gems in it. If you’re a Star Wars fan, I definitely would recommend this. 

I really enjoyed this read. Somehow this book made me feel better about my life, even though I also regret so many little choices that I have made.

This is good, with the caveat that this is indeed a YA book. The idea and plot are interesting, but the invisibility aspect doesn't seem to impact the story much at all. And speaking of the invisibility aspect, the subtext and reasoning for it are about as subtle as a slap to the face. It's immediately obvious why it's happening to our main character, and I could have sworn that about twenty pages in she mentioned that she understood, too. But she obviously didn't, and it's painfully tedious to keep reading about her not understanding it. I'm also not a big fan of the ending. The message was meant to be about the disparity of living situations and opportunities between rich and not-rich people (I think?). But as the characters flaunt this during their parading around at the end, it was alas nepotism baby that actually saved the day. If there were more internal reflections for our main character, and if she actually thought for more than two seconds about something, I think she would have made a fantastic main character, and if the ending was better, this could have been a way better book.