The following post includes affiliate links. More details here.  As you’re doing your Amazon shopping, we’d be ever so grateful if you’d use our affiliate link to do so as it helps pay the bills around here!

While we are celebrating Jane In January, we are also preparing for our return to Crescent City.  You’re invited to join us on Friday, February 11 at 7:30 pm CST as we reread, deep dive, and theorize over what awaits us in the House of Sky and Breath (#2).  Spoilers will abound, because I need to talk about Jelly ponies, vacuums, revenge, and demons.  Sign up here to join in the heartache and fun of House of Earth and Blood (#1). 

When a book starts with a dedication to Jane Austen, I’m already swooning for the author, so I was here for The Stars We Steal by Alexa Donne from the start.  A retelling of Persuasion in a sci-fi setting sounds amazing.  And then we get to the rest of the set up, which, in true Regency style, includes a season as our forced proximity, but this is no regular season.  Although we do have a version of the ton, the Valg (settle down TOG fans, I know, but it’s not like that) Season only happens every five years, so the pressure is on for these gals, and the gents too, which is a nice change.  Here’s the piece that’s really interesting about the novel – all of humanity is in space, and each large ship (which functions more like a space station) houses the people from a particular country or region, and then smaller ships for wealthy families or businesses can dock with them, and move around the fleet.  Shocking no one, some ships are very focused on lineage, titles, and upstairs / downstairs separations, while others are more focused on the have and have nots.  I know, the distinction is a bit pedantic, but the characters do retain a bit of the cultures we know, even after 170 years in space, which was fun, and also a bit depressing to consider.  

In The Stars We Steal, Donne keeps the large cast of supporting characters, which is well done with our hero Elliott Wentworth’s family situation reinvented in his friends, especially Evgenia who is a bit of a fashionista looking to find the lady of her dreams.  Our heroine Leo, short for Leonie, has a large, sprawling family, including a father and younger sister who fit the bill of the father and older sister in Austen’s original, and her aunt, who is the captain of the Scandinavian, and her cousin, who’s also participating in her only Valg season.  While the set up is mostly what you’d think given this retelling with a Bachelor / Bachelorette overlay, there is also a bit of mystery to figure out as we go along, which adds to the fun of the experience so I won’t spoil.  

Overall, I’m giving The Stars We Steal by Alexa Donne 2.5 stars and rounding up to 3 stars.  While the retelling was in a creative setting with several fun tweaks, the writing was just mediocre.  Part of the mystery wasn’t explained to my satisfaction (Ashley also says she didn’t care for it being left open) and part of it was super obvious (or maybe I read too much, or maybe both).  Truly, this book is a fun hang, but that’s about it.  I may pick up another of Donne’s books to see how it compares, but I’m not automatically adding her other titles to my TBR.  If you like retellings and love Persuasion, then perhaps this has a place on your TBR, just don’t expect much from it beyond an entertaining story.

What is a title you wanted to adore but ended up just being a meh fun hang?

~Nikki

Alexa Donne is a YA author of three titles, Burning Brightly, a Jane Eyre retelling (and it might have been on our short list for 2021’s Jane in January), The Stars We Steal, our Persuasion retelling, and The Ivies, a 2021 thriller release about prep school studies willing to kill to get into an Ivy League institution. For 2022 she has another YA thriller slated for release in October, Pretty Dead Queens. She has over 450 videos on her YouTube channel educating on the publishing industry and giving general and genre specific writing advice. When she’s not writing or sharing videos on the internet, she works in TV marketing, does pro bono college admissions mentoring, and mentors with WriteGirl, a L.A. nonprofit that “spotlights the power of a young girl and her pen.”  She’s a graduate of Boston University and lives in Los Angeles with two ginger cats named after YA literature characters.

My deepest feelings about The Stars We Steal are: I did not like the idea of the Valg Season being based upon The Bachelor/Bachelorette, that all the girls wore dresses all the damn time, and that this amazing concept was written for YA. I shall elaborate. I understand the pop-cultural phenomenon that is The Bachelor/Bachelorette. I do listen to The Popcast with Knox and Jamie every week, even though I skip over their Bachelor/Bachelorette intro/recap shows – but if you’re a Friend or Best Friend of the Show on Patreon you get recaps of EVERY EPISODE. It’s just not my thing, ok. I’m really not here for reality television, but I understand it exists and is very important for many people and creating conversation with strangers on the internet. Was the Valg Season cool because they did a personality profile and gave percentages to ‘their perfect match?’ Yes. I’m also very thankful that there wasn’t any actual ‘elimination’ of dates and everyone got the opportunity to look for a partner of any gender. Was the fact the Valg Season’s emblem was a rose dumb and the only true call back to The Bachelor? So much yes. Moving on. Secondly, women do not constantly wear dresses even if they are part of a noble/ruling class out in space. Sometimes you’re just going to wear some yoga pants or a nice pair of jeans. Also, readers aren’t looking for a description of all the various casual dresses in the closet, let’s stick with the finery and move on. Finally, it would have been so much more tension filled had we had some more in-depth descriptions of Elliot Wentworth’s entrepreneurial activities (IYKYK), more focus on the have/have-not plot line than the Valg Season, and maybe an open door sex scene or two.

Overall, The Stars We Steal is a very meets expectations read, but as Nikki said there were just too many things that were never explained in enough detail in the plot for me to get super invested in the characters. A grudging 3 star read from me, and a tolerable representation of a classic book retelling in YA format.

~Ashley

PLEASE SUPPORT US WHEN YOU SHOP BY FIRST CLICKING ON THE IMAGES BELOW: