This book had me hooked the first 'chapter' in; it's been the only book to terrify me within the first opening sequence. Tuck wakes up from stasis after 400 years and finds his ship, the John Muir, he been jettisoned to deep space and will likely never be found again. With other ships trying to colonize Mars, we learn about other ships who are raiding lost ships to try to find any surviving life. Laura, a young hacker aboard the Conquistador, finds herself in a lot of trouble when she discovers ANOTHER hacker on board, and not an ethical hacker, a malicious one. Soon, the Conquistador and the John Muir collide, killing many left on board. Laura and Tuck find themselves face to face in the Muir's deepdown tunnels and must work together to try and get power restored or surely everyone will die from lack of oxygen and freezing temperatures.

This isn't all easy work though. There are monsters out there. Mourners, Weepers, and Griefers. Their screams alone can tear your guts apart. The only advantage Tuck and Laura have is that these monsters cannot see, but only hear. Something went wrong with some of the Muir's crew during stasis, morphing them into Alien-esque beasts, covered in goo, tentacles, and becoming some nasty form of space zombies.

Friendships are made, others are broken. Secrets are revealed. It's up to Tuck and Laura to save the rest of humanity.

The timing between events in this book was perfect. I had trouble putting it down because I constantly wanted to know what was going to happen next, if they were going to get out of a situation alive. I didn't think a book could scare me and get my anxiety going, but this one did the trick. I liked the modern references (reminder that this takes place long into the future so our modern references are considered retro) and the Galaxy Quest reference especially. Definitely worth the read if you are looking for something exciting that will keep you on the edge of your seat. Thanks NetGalley for the advance review copy of this book!

#NetGalley #PitchDark #CourtneyAlameda

Laura is a strong Latina temporarily trapped in an abusive relationship, smart and loyal. Tuck is a broken and closed-off boy trying to live up to his mother's shining example. Born 400 years apart, Tuck Morgan and Laura Cruz should never have met. The USS John Muir was lost with Tuck and the rest of the crew in stasis until shortly before the Conquistador finds them. Too bad the shadowy organization Pitch Dark wants both ships to be lost forever. Laura and Tuck must rely on each other to save the survivors on both ships, as well as the rest of the universe.
Great strong female characters, main and otherwise! I love the idea that future people will be non-white and Latino(though I guess Asian, myself) and the importance of intelligence and knowledge-seeking. The book's message is that girls absolutely don't need to be rescued by a white male, but it is nice to have help and support of any kind in all endeavors.

Even the gods have abandoned us out here.

If you follow my reviews, you know I’m a big horror fan, but what you might not already know is what a sucker I am for horror/sci-fi genre-blending and spooky stories set in outer space. Courtney Alameda is known for her horror writing, but she interlaces the terror aspects with the sci-fi, futuristic, technology side stunningly.

We were supposed to wake up saved, or not wake up at all. That was the deal we made with fate.

→ Tuck ←
The narrative of Pitch Dark alternates perspectives between two protagonists – one from the “past”, and one from the “future”. Our first introduction is to our “past” character, Tuck, who has been in cryo-sleep for a few hundred years, only to awaken to a spaceship full of corpses and monstrosities. He’s hopeless, angry, and hurting, but has such a good heart – a quintessential “teddy bear” character, at your service. Unfortunately, despite how lovable he can be, Tuck never felt three-dimensional to me, and his lack of intricate development was a huge drawback.

“The madman with a box?” I ask. “Bad Wolf? We have a lot of running to do?” They both look at me as if I’m the one who’s lost my damn mind. “All righty then. Allons-y.”

→ pop culture references ←
On the other hand, my favorite thing about Tuck was easily his pop culture refs. I make no attempts to hide my usual annoyance with these sorts of things, because they frequently come out forced and unnatural, but Tuck’s are done phenomenally and are so cute. The above-quoted Doctor Who reference was easily my favorite, but most of all, I adored how frustrated he got when people didn’t catch his references! (I relate so much.)

To all the girls who write their own histories, who resist men telling them to “stop,” and save themselves in the end, this one’s for you.

→ Laura ←
Our “future” perspective comes from Laura Cruz. She’s a teen Latinx girl with archaeologists for parents, and she is positively brilliant and fierce. She takes nobody’s mess and is determined to take care of herself at all costs, relying on no one to save her. If you enjoy hard-headed, angry, capable heroines, Laura’s your girl. I appreciated her so much, and my favorite thing about her was the social commentary she was able to provide on the current state of society.

I’d like to say that in the last few centuries, humanity’s grown past these compulsions in a moral sense, that we’ve become better. Nobler. Wiser. But we haven’t.

→ racism ←
As a woman of color, Laura explains that a few centuries haven’t been enough time to rid the entire human race of its bigotry. There’s been so much reproduction between races, it has caused a sort of ethnic mesh in most of society, to the point where fully “white” individuals only keep their white skin by going to great lengths to avoid any biracial reproductivity. Because of how deliberate being a white person in Laura’s world is, most individuals assume that entirely white individuals are simply clinging to Nazi-like ideals of the past. This was a really refreshing take on the idea of a world in white cultural and racial diversity is normalized, but was also a truly interesting theoretical prediction for the future of our world.

“That’s the folly of the human heart. We make macro decisions based on micro motivations.”

→ social commentaries ←
Besides the discussion of racism, there’s a lot of observation of how we treat the planet, as we are informed that the reason humans left Earth in Tuck’s time was to escape the mess they’d made of it and the fact that the planet had been utterly drained of resources. Even the creatures on Tuck’s ship are explained to have been created not by some zombie virus or magical mutation, but by the after-effects in breathing and drinking in too much pollution from the Earth era.

They’re not aliens or zombies, just our own mistake.

→ fear factor ←
I know a lot of my followers are hesitant to pick up horror stories, so I wanted to go ahead and let you guys who aren’t horror fans know that, in my opinion, this is an extremely approachable read for individuals who don’t typically enjoy horror. It’s so heavy on the sci-fi aspect that it doesn’t read like your usual horror story, but there are some gruesome descriptions of mutated creatures, so if your stomach is easily unsettled, you may want to proceed with caution.

This book is inspired by the Aliens film franchise, and I would say that it felt very similar to those in terms of the level of horror and “grossness” achieved. If you enjoy those films, I think you would enjoy this story, too. This would be a good time to warn you that there is a scene in this book that comes with major warnings for trypophobia. As someone who has a mild case of trypophobia, the description in that scene was really nauseating and I had to skim past it, but it does give you a bit of warning before it goes into detail.

I wonder what I’d do with such a lonely boy, one who carries a broken heart in his chest and pretends it beats the same as everyone else’s.

→ romance ←
Finally, I want to touch on the only other thing that didn’t catch my eye much in Pitch Dark: the blossoming relationship between Tuck and Laura. You see it coming a mile away, but towards the end, I felt like it became oddly forced. They were a great pair for each other and the chemistry was there from the start, so I thought it’d be a home run, but at the end, I almost felt like, “Wait, that’s all?” I don’t want to give any sorts of spoilers, but I’ll just say that the romance was the main reason I gave this book 4 stars instead of 5.

All quotes are taken from an ARC and may not match the final product. Thank you so much to Feiwel & Friends for providing me with this ARC in exchange for my honest review!

This book was okay. The beginning took a bit to get into and I never really felt connected to the characters. Some aspects of the plot were also a little confusing. I'm sure many will be drawn to this book by the synopsis and cover and I hope they enjoy it more than I did.

The preview of this novel was so enticing. I was looking forward to a nice and dark horror/thriller in space, with futuristic surroundings and lots of action. And I got that. Kinda.
Pitch dark starts with Tuck coming out of hyper sleep, 400 years in the future. There is a great sense of foreboding and a nice side note of humor that evens it out. Laura’s character starts in a high tech scenario that brings out her savviness and cultural heritage. Both characters develop throughout the story and are interesting together and on their own. They have a wonderful banter when they have dialogue and are equally fun to follow around on their own.
Alameda spent a lot of time focusing on Laura’s culture and Tuck’s “history” knowledge. These were both aspects I felt helped and drew back from the book. Laura’s Hispanic heritage was a great addition, but went over the top at times to try and force it in. At one point towards the beginning, Laura had a small rant about the world of the future that gave her character a little bit of a holier-than-thou attitude that was hard to shake. I did enjoy her sassiness and the sense of family bond that she brought. Tuck’s humor was a little more easy-going and read easier as a result. His cultural references (old movies, quotes) were humorous, but could be lost on a teen audience of today.
The setting itself is a little lacking. Tucks ship is so immense that it is hard to imagine. Having full mountains in a ship? How would they even get in there? It seems highly farfetched for even 400 years in the future, much less the 80 when it was constructed. As a result, I could never fully immerse myself in the ships, I only saw snippets that were still distorted and continually shrinking.
The horror/thriller factor was also lost to me. It was much more action than horror. There were some great action scenes, yet the “monsters” were also quite fuzzy to me. Alameda had some great descriptions, but these creatures seemed to always be different and ended up just becoming a kind of oozing creature in my head at the end. They did not have a scary factor to them, and I wished that there had been more of an explanation as to how they were formed (why do there seem to be different species?) or if they could be healed (these were humans not that long ago, right?).
As I made it to the end I felt that I had enjoyed the book, while disliking it at the same time. I had gotten a lot of what I did not expect, but missed out on the reasons I had wanted to read the book. I feel that this needs a little more fine tuning to make it a great read. I cared about the characters and where they were heading I just wish that there had been more thrills along the way. I plan to try this out with some of my SciFi teens to see what their perspectives are since I can’t quite make up my mind.

I read an ARC of this book from NetGalley and I'm not sure why I requested it. (Although it does have an amazing cover!) I was not a big fan of Shutter by Alameda so that should've been a clue right there. But the description sounded great and I love sci fi so I overrode my instinct and requested it anyway which was a mistake. I can't say for sure what it is about her writing that doesn't do it for me but there's something. But I know that it's a personal issue specific to Alameda's writing so I can't be super-critical of the book overall even though I was dreading reading it. In fact, as I was describing sections of the book to my husband, I could tell that the plot lines were interesting and that there were some unique parts. (He's going to read it and will probably be a fan.) I was intrigued by the idea of the subjegator but wish that we'd learned more about the Smithsons who put it in her and more details on why they decided to use it on her. Those bad guys should've really been built up but they were almost incidental. Was Sebastian using her the entire time or did he actually like her at some point? As for the other bad guy, I saw that coming but I think my teens will be surprised and outraged with that twist. Just a "meh" for me. However....

My feelings toward the book became warmer and fuzzier when I read the author's note. I love Alameda's introspective description of how political became personal during the writing and all the symbolic touches she included in the story. So, while I might not mesh with her writing style, I now love Courtney Alameda as a person.

I received an ARC from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

Wow. I loved this book. I’ve never been the type to pick up a thriller/horror book, but I couldn’t put this book down. Alameda weaves an interesting tale of both Laura and Tuck, two teens in space. Without getting too much into detail, I loved these characters.

Laura’s a tough as nails Latina. She’s quick and smart and doesn’t stay down. She’s from a family of educated and hardworking people and proud of her Hispanic heritage. Thank you Ms. Alameda for writing a strong, independent Latina main character. Lord knows we need more Laura’s in the world.

Tuck is sharp and witty. I laughed out loud of Tuck’s movie and pop-culture references. He’s imperfect and struggling, and I love that he’s neither the YA savior trope nor the wounded puppy dog either. He’s smart, he’s human, and he’s still learning.

I loved the story line and the flow of the narrative. My only complaint is that it ended so soon.

I hope to find another book about Tuck and Laura somewhere down the line :)