Title: Lanterns in the Sky (The Starlight Chronicles #1)
Author: P.S. Malcolm
Pub. Date: March 5, 2020
Rating: 2 / DNF at 50%

This will be a spoiler free review, and I want to thank NetGalley for the free eARC in exchange for an honest review.

The cover is what initially drew me to this book, and then I read the synopsis. I pretty much impulse requested it on NetGalley and got the approval email. My expectations weren’t high for this book, but based on the synopsis, I did have high hopes. It sounded really unique and something I’d like.
Ya’ll this book just didn’t work.
I tried to convince myself to finish it, but between the writing style, the messy plot full of plot holes, the world building and the one-dimensional characters I just can’t stay invested.
Right off the bat, I wasn’t a fan of the writing style. It was really bland and basic. Writing style isn’t a make it or break it thing for me, so I pushed through my dislike, since the concept of the book sounded really interesting and cool.
Then there’s the plot.
Things happen in this book.
Well, obviously. I don’t know where I was going with that sentence.
Things happen in this book, some of it makes sense, other things are just weird and there’s such a strange mix of fantasy elements that it all just gets confusing and lost. I also didn’t quite understand the magic system, or how there are magical princess, aliens and angels…like I said, lots of fantasy elements that don’t quite mesh together. So much happens, but also like nothing happens of any real consequence? It’s like all the emotional weights were gone?
And the worldbuilding. I get the feel the author was going for, but a fictionalized European country, nestled amongst Easter European countries, but heavily influenced by Britain and everyone has American sounding names…
It’s also very confusing.
I get that the author was trying to go for a quintessential European feel, kind of reminded me of Switzerland in the very basic way it was described, but overall, it just felt very generic, flat and was supposed to be pretty. Almost a magical backdrop. Like, if you were to look up Travel Destinations in Switzerland, hilly, mountainous, gorgeous, that’s the vibe I was getting, but wasn’t quite picturing based on the descriptions given.
Now the characters…I wasn’t a fan of Lucy, or Valarie. Chrissy is just a stereotypical mean girl on steroids…basically Regina George. Jason was…well, to be honest, I didn’t care. None of the characters sparked anything in me. They were one-dimensional and at no moment was I rooting for them. Every character seemed to exist to further Lucy and Valarie along, adding really noting substantial to the rest of the story. For having their worlds upended, and pasts revealed, and everything else that happens, Lucy doesn’t ever really react? She sort of just takes it in stride, and suddenly with no training or anything, can just do things. I get that there’s magic involved in this, and that explains why, but come on. No one is just going to be okay with being thrust into a ever raging war, not without first losing their shit.
Ultimately, to my disappointment, this book just didn’t do it for me. Overall, it was just kind of a mess and I don’t want to recommend this to anyone. It’s just not worth it.

Thank you netgally for this arc to review. I was not overly impressed with this book. It was middle of the road for me. I thought it was light and fun and a quick read. It kept me interested enough to finish but didn't wow me. The world building could have been great but just fell very flat. I wanted to picture these scenes in my head but couldn't. The characters were one dimensional which didn't make them unlikeable but kind of made me feel indifferent toward them. I think with some more detail this book could be great.

I had exceptionally high hopes for this book. The cover was beyond gorgeous and if it was in a store I probably would have bought it just for the cover.
But the story itself was flat, messy, and at times a bit hard to follow. There is almost no world building and if there is it's thrown in haphazardly and you have to pick it out.
Overall this had promise but it just didn't feel cohesive to me

Thank you to NetGalley and The Parliament House for providing me with an e-arc of this book in exchange for an honest review. These opinions are exclusively my own.

With such a beautiful cover, I expected equal greatness inside, but this book just was not it. Sure it sounded promising, but sadly, it did not deliver.

This book involves the first evolved humans after dinosaurs, called Starlight people, evil aliens, and angels.

For almost the entirety of this book, I was rolling my eyes at their idiocy or scratching my head in confusion. Sure this book moves at a fast pace, but it does so in a very messy choppy way. We were either given no information at all or random pieces of information, that seemed valuable but really just jumbled my brain even worse, there was no in between. The plot was so messy and convoluted that I just gave up trying to understand. The more I questioned either information or characters’ actions, the more annoyed I became.

The characters were lackluster, and I really did not feel connected with any of them. Their actions and plans had so many holes.

There was little to no world building, which made it difficult to fully dive into this world. Other than its set somewhere in Europe near Austria (though if the author hadn’t explicitly said it, I would have guessed it was the USA. Everything seems very Americanized), there was no world building about the ancient Kingdoms.

Even the writing was pretty juvenile. Again, it just didn't entice me into the story.

I gave it an additional star only because the last 5% caught my attention (i know im being generous). Sadly though, I will not be continuing this series despite that interesting reveal. I *barely* made it through this book without DNFing it, I dont think i can make it through a second time.

This book really did not work for me, but it might work for you so consider borrowing it from your local library, if available.

This book was really interesting and had a cool premise but it wasn't as good as I had originally hoped. I didn't like the characters as much but I liked the plot.

**Disclaimer: I was given a free e-ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review from Xpresso Book Tours via NetGalley.**

Title Lanterns in the Sky (Starlight Chronicles #1)

Author P.S. Malcolm

Description

Everything was normal for Lucy Maisfer until the day a star fell from the sky and knocked her out. Upon waking, she comes face-to-face with Jason Woods, who also happens to be the mysterious new guy in her best friend, Valarie’s, life.

Then the strange dreams begin, and she learns about the Starlight Princess— who must not under any circumstance be reawakened. Driven to uncover the meaning of it, she finds herself caught up in a strange twist of events that eventually lead to bigger danger than she ever anticipated. Before long, Lucy is forced to make a choice between saving the world, or saving her best friend; only to discover that Valarie cannot be saved… that she has an even darker secret, and that her supposed star-crossed romance with Jason might not be so destined after all…

Release Date March 5, 2019

Initial Thoughts

I signed up for the Blitz for this book thinking that it sounded interesting. I didn’t know that I would receive a copy of the book as part of the process – so that was a very pleasant surprise.

Some Things I Liked

World building. I thought the world building was an interesting continuation of what we saw in Starlight. I liked the way the magic system was explained as well as the different species magical beings Lucy interacted with.
Single POV. I liked that Lucy was the only narrator here. I thought it made the story feel more mysterious. It definitely kept me on the edge of my seat.

One Thing I Wasn’t Crazy About

I wasn’t a fan of the setting change. I read the novella first and the setting was much more fantasy-oriented (as opposed to the modern setting in Lanterns in the Sky). I much preferred that setting.

Series Value

I would continue with this series. I can’t promise it would be right away, but I’d like to know what the next chapter of this series has in store for these characters.

Final Thoughts

I enjoyed this book. It was a bit of a change from the novella, Starlight, that I read first, but I thought the parts of the story that were continuations of the novella were well done. I would keep reading this series.

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Recommendations for Further Reading

Furyborn by Claire Legrand – if you like the idea of lost royals and secrets, give this series by Claire Legrand a try.
Red Queen by Victoria Aveyard – if you liked the idea of a lost heir mixed with forbidden magic, try this series.
Caraval by Stephanie Garber – if you like the description of the world in Starlight, try this series, it gave me several similar vibes.

The blurb on this book sounded interesting, but unfortunately this just fell short. There was an extreme lack of world building and character development. There was not enough in some areas and then just so much going on in others that I had to re-read it just to figure out what was going on.

I can't recommend this to anyone unfortunately. There are just too many amazing stories out there to pick this one up.

Intriguing concept which could use more character development and world building. A younger YA audience would enjoy this fantasy tale.

ARC from NetGalley
1.5 stars

Well that was bad. I need a glass of wine.

No worldbuilding. I barely had any idea what the characters even looked like, let alone anything around them. The story was childish and seemingly put together as the author went, which can be done well but was not in this instance. The dialogue was juvenile. The story was juvenile. There were so many plot holes. I actually started to get angry as I read this book. The only reason I finished it was because I am going to meet my reading goal damnit.

I am going to start swearing and spoiling now
<spoiler>To start with, I should have known the direction this was going (crap-town) when I read that the bad guys were referred to as "shadeows" not shadows, shade-ows. Shad-e-ows? Daddyo? Whatever. The MC is fucking useless. She is weak. Her power is weak. Every time she uses it, it breaks. The romance is shit. There is the hundreds-of-years-stalker and the wait-is-this-maybe-going-to-be-a-romance unfulfilling fucking never-romance. The magic is ridiculous. Chrissy's power makes no fucking sense. She can see what you are doing through any mirror or apparently anything remotely reflective. In the mine, Lucy steps on a pipe and breaks it, which leads me to believe it was rusted as fuck, and somehow Chrissy saw her, knew where she was even though she was in a dark as fuck abandoned mine. I started getting really angry around that point. Everyone is making fucking terrible decisions just to move the plot along. Question, if Valarie looks exactly the same as she did before she reincarnated, one would assume that Lucy also looked exactly the same. So why the fuck did Jason not know that Lucy was the starlight princess? Eh? EH? The ending? Are you fucking kidding me? BTW Valarie, you were switched at fucking birth and you are actually a shadeow DUN DUN DUN.</spoiler>

Too many plot holes. Too little worldbuilding. No character development at all. Uninteresting and unbelievable story. This is an ARC, so it is possibly going to get another look-over by the editor before publishing, but believe me that it needs it. There were lots of errors. This book reads more like it was geared towards tweens than teens/young adults. It was not good. I regret wasting my time on it. As I continue to write this, more irritating things keep coming to mind but whatever. I need to move on with my life *sips wine*

Lanterns in the Sky was the second book I read in January and it’s unfortunate that I found it to be easily forgettable and even though I didn’t come into this book with high expectations I was greatly disappointed. This book is about Lucy, a girl in high school who encounters a fallen star, then starts having dreams about the Starlight Princess; the setting is in our current world but in a fictional country.

Lucy, her best friend Valarie, and love interest Jason are the main characters that we follow and I had a hard time connecting with any of them. A lot of the things that they did throughout the book either didn’t make sense or were just too convenient. By the end I knew more about Valarie than Lucy and that was from information provided at the beginning.

The main setting for the story, Lorelei, had some real potential, but even though it was supposed to be in Europe everything just felt Americanized. The world building truly did suffer from a lack of information; throughout the story different locations are travelled to while little information is given about them.

The plot contained some things that had great potential, but they didn’t work well with others and at times it just felt like a big mess. In my opinion, if some of the extra things were stripped from the plot and there was more attention to detail the story would have been more enjoyable.

While Lanterns in the Sky is marketed as a young adult book the writing is lazy and immature with some more mature themes, so it would be difficult to recommend. Even if someone needed an easy introduction to fantasy I feel that there are better written books available.

I honestly could not stand this story and it took a long time to just accept I was never going to get through it. Unfortunately this is my first DNF of the year, but since I made it past 50% I feel justified in giving my review.

The world building was highly lacking. The author gave detail of the EXACT location the story was taking place, somewhere in the middle of Europe, but there was never any mention of a different culture, way of speaking or any other differentiating qualities as to why this even mattered in the first place. If anything it made me more confused!

The characters are all someone else in a different life which can be confusing. Some have powers and others do not. Essentially those with powers the author did not do a great job explaining why and how and where the powers came from. I felt the depth to the world building was lacking, causing the character to loose credibility.

I gave up when the main character gets taken into space by an angel to take star power out of lanterns in the sky? She had a protective shield around her to protect her from outer space. This in and of itself was so absurd I just gave up.

One star for effort.

This book was received as an ARC from The Parliament House in exchange for an honest review. Opinions and thoughts expressed in this review are completely my own.

My adrenaline while reading this book almost skyrocketed to the max because of the position Lucy came in when she got hit with a star learning that her best friend has a close knit relationship with a boy named Jason Woods whom they act like they were destined for each other but Lucy knew that there was more to Jason than meets the eye. Now poking her nose where she is not supposed to, she is left in this dilemma which forces her to make a choice, save her best friend or saving the world later to find out that her best friend Valarie is not whom she thinks and holds a dark secret that could cost Lucy her life. My heart almost completely stopped when the climax broke out about Valarie. This book was so intense that I felt like I was at risk myself feeling so passionate for Lucy and fighting with her. I know our teen book club will go crazy for this.

We will consider adding this title to our YA collection at our library. That is why we give this book 5 stars.

Lanterns in the Sky isn't even out until March. Most reviewers don't usually post reviews until closer to the release date. Why was it archived so early? According to the other reviews it doesn't sound very promising. I may still check it out but I guess there's no point in reviewing it here?

Edit: I tried to read it and the writing is horrendous and cringy. The beautiful cover is very misleading. 😩

DNF at 50%

I really wanted to like this book. It sounded pretty cool, and the cover is gorgeous!

Unfortunately, I found that reading this book made me not want to read at all. I realized I was reading it out of obligation instead of enjoyment. So when I hit 50% and still wasn't enjoying it, I stopped.

The characters were very one dimensional and I found that they could have traded places part way through the book and I wouldn't have even noticed. They were not relatable, they were not developed, and I didn't care about any of them.

The world building was also confusing. I assumed, from the names of characters, the language, and the high school party experience that opens the book, that this book was set in America. Then it was casually mentioned that it was in a (fictional) European country, and my brain just locked that away in a box to ignore because it made absolutely no sense at all.

Then there was the plot, which was both all over the place and too basic at once. And I'm not even sure how that can be true, but it is. I felt like a lot of the information we got was dumped in lengthy paragraphs of characters explaining to other characters instead of a more exciting way (like the flashbacks that we got in the beginning of the book).

I'm sad that this book wasn't for me. I really did go into it hoping to love it.

Complete waste of time, effort, and energy. It didn’t make a single bit of sense. I re-read pages and pages trying to understand and decided to skip ahead to the ending and decided it was just a piece of crap. Thank goodness it was just an ARC. The idea that some wants to actually publish this garbage is beyond me. It was also excessively violent for a book about teenagers.

I was provided with an ARC of this book by NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

So let's start by saying that the cover of this book is absolutely gorgeous and that is definitely what grabbed my attention. If only the rest of the book was as good as the cover led me to believe, I wouldn't have felt the need to leave a one-star review.

Let me start out by addressing the over usage of italics in this book. For me, italics should be rare and they should used to either emphasize something extremely important or for inner dialogue. In this book, every page had 5-8 words italicized and that was so distracting for me and had the absolute opposite effect than what I think was intended. Verbs and adjectives were italicized frequently, which I really don't get.

In terms of writing style, that was my major concern. The character development was another major concern in terms of content. The main character, Lucy, is a classic Mary Sue. A "perfect" female character who, with no experience or knowledge of battle, warfare or magic, suddenly develops this super ability to be great at all of it. In addition to her unrealistic abilities, as far as her personality goes, that was also a major concern. Lucy is an incredibly whiny character and I found that to be so annoying. Her meltdown and extreme judmental-ness when her best friend wanted to go to a party (like the majority of teenagers do) left such a major bad taste in my mouth and after that, I found that I couldn't stand her holier-than-thou attitude. I also did not buy her friendship with Valarie, at all. Lucy treated her terribly but wanted to act like everyone should sacrifice themselves for her. I just couldn't reconcile their interactions with Lucy's extreme protectiveness. The villain in this novel was also not well developed; I didn't really understand her motivation nor did I find her to be particularly crafty or effective.

My other major concern is the number of fantasy elements that were present in this book. It had a rebellion, missing princess, reincarnation, aliens life forms, angels/fallen angels, magical abilities, mind control, super spying skills... it was just a lot. Limiting the number of elements to two or three would have really helped.

I received a copy of this book from Netgalley and the publisher in exchange for an honest review.

Lanterns in the Sky was a fun read! The cover is beautiful, whoever did it capture the intensity of the book well! This book is full of love, romantic suspense, and Action adventure!

One day, Lucy is just a normal school girl. But when she witnesses an incredible light element falling form the sky, she begins to get weird dreams. When a few of her peers are talking about a star that has fallen from the sky and the Starlight princess who has lost her memory of her previous life, pieces start to fall in place for Lucy. When her best friend Valarie goes missing, Lucy is torn between saving the world or her family and her best friend. All the while the danger grows bigger and even Lucy’s life is in danger. She has to make some very difficult decisions to do the right thing and save the universe.

While the beginning of the story seemed very promising because of the easy writing style and the interesting story line, I found out this book wasn’t really my thing. First of all, the worldbuilding didn’t quite add up. The mixture of our planet as we know it and the magical world from the Starlight Princess wasn’t very believable. I felt how the author tried to mix these two worlds together into a new one, but it wasn’t just that. The characters didn’t really seem to get me either. Lucy mostly seemed like a pushover because she eagerly believes a lot of the things she’s been told. And while the story continues and the writer shares some secrets about Lucy’s past, it’s more like someones retelling a lot of it, in stead of feeling it’s someones reality. There was a lot of information after Lucy met a few peers who knew more about the past of the Starlight princess, but while they were telling it, it didn’t quite seem so real. A little further there was more action and the use of magic seemed a little better whilte it was being used.

Nevertheless, the story was pretty nice to read. It all just happenend and felt really natural while reading most parts. The only thing I didn’t like about the writing style was the overuse of italic words to put some extra focus on some spoken words or thoughts. Sometimes it was usefull to understand the urgency in something, but when it’s used 5 to 10 times per page, it becomes a little annoying.

I don’t want to write off or take down this entire book nor the author, because I can see a lot of work is put into it and I can see why readers might like it. It just wasn’t quite the story for me and that’s probably why I wasn’t able to finish the entire story. I read more than 50% but I still couldn’t get the hang of it. So unfortunately I put away the book before finishing.

I shared the review on goodreads, but I won't be posting it on my private blog, because it's not quite a book a liked a lot and I don't want to post to much negativity about a book online.

You’d be surprised what people would do just to turn their lives around..

3 stars

Everything was normal for Lucy, until the day a star knocked her out. Strange dreams begin, and she learns of a past life she never knew she had – until now. Caught up in strange events, Lucy must make the choice; try save the world or try save her best friend.

Initial Thoughts
#LanternsInTheSky #NetGalley
Thank you NetGalley for sending me this title in exchange for an honest review.

I loved this book, it was a nice easy read that I managed to fly through in two days. In the beginning, I was confused about what genre this book was. Looking at the cover I had guessed it was fantasy, but upon reading (I didn’t know too much about this book going into it), it really reads like a contemporary for the beginning of the book. I really liked it though, it made it more “realistic”, in a sense, that the reader could connect to it more. Overall, I thought it was a pretty solid YA fantasy, there were some aspects that weren’t at all unique to the genre, but other minor things that I have not seen in the genre before.

High Points
Overall, the writing style is nice and easy to read. The writing is descriptive, but not overly descriptive that it makes the reading unbearable and over-saturated with information. The actual story concept was interesting and something that I don’t particularly read a lot of in the YA genre. The characters were all family likable and had their own unique traits. I like how this book dealt with grief, and overcoming grief, in a different way; showing a character coming to terms with certain event. I do really appreciate that we see deep character growth from a supporting character rather than the main character. We follow Valarie throughout the book and her transformation from a fragile being to someone who wants to gain control of their life back, and to overcome the thoughts that had consumed them prior. Lastly, the ending was completely un-expected, and I loved it. There are so many questions I have that have been left unanswered and I can see myself getting the next book in the series when it is released (or an ARC, whichever I can get a copy of as soon as possible).

Low Points
As always, I have a few things that I found I didn’t really appreciate in the writing. The magic system intrigued me, but it seemed like it was first mentioned in a quick burst of information that was difficult to decipher in the beginning. I found that throughout the story it started to make more sense when things were pieced together, but I feel it could have been better explained. Secondly, I noticed a (somewhat) decline in the writing as you progressed through the book. The beginning was so strong for me and a good reflection of the YA fantasy genre, however, as I read on, I felt the writing and the character interactions feel more middle grade rather than YA. As I mentioned before, it was a good story line, but unfortunately for me, nothing to overly unique.

Recommended For
I would recommend this to those who like a light fantasy novel that is easy to read and understand the language. Or for those who love a character arc of writing wrongs and realising potentials.

Lanterns in the Sky was such a fun book with a unique plot. This novel submerges the reader in a landscape so imaginative and detailed that the information of the world building never feels forced, and is never difficult to understand or picture in one's mind. I loved it!