I really liked the idea of this book, but overall it fell short of its promises.

The storyline, set in chapters focusing on a particular character is a story about people living in an apartment building, their relationships with each other, and some aliens. I think it wants to set itself up a bit like Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy, but it's not funny and it's not clever. It's just a narration of what happens.

Overall, I give 2 stars. I can see promise in the author's ideas, but the execution was lacking and it just wasn't really interesting if I'm honest.

Thanks for the opportunity to read Netgalley.

This book was a beautiful, fun and quirky ride of a read. It is set in the East Village of NY(1995). The story is told in multiple POVs with fabulous doodles denoting each character.(Loved it)
The story revolves around Ollie who has lot his cat and also has a mysterious sighting of something extraterrestrial.
Now, this extraterrestrial being is a very weirdly amusing doubleheaded turtle shaped, alien/creature duo called AxzleProva. It has one female and one male head in one body.They refer to each other as "SHELL MATES", on Earth we say "SOUL MATES", but these SHELL MATE CHARACTERS are interesting to read about. If the female gets upset with the male she ignores him for 1 light year (Imagine).
Ollie tells hid friends about the sighting but they don't believe him because they suspect its all due to his overactive imagination, even his close friend Zara doesn't look convinced.
Zara has recently broken up with a cheating boyfriend and has sworn off men for sometime. She has come to NY to have a change of scenery and move on from the past. She is a lead vocalist in a band consisting of Ollie and his two friends.
Together, they will solve the mystery of the missing cat and the extraterrestrial sighting in this fun and unique book.

Thank you NetGalley and Delas Heras for providing me with an ARC in exchange of an honest review.
3.5 stars

(4.5 out of 5 stars. My review will be live on my blog, at the link provided, on August 11)

I love a weird, quirky sci-fi book. There's just something so inherently fun about weird sci-fi – it often doesn't take itself very seriously, freeing the author to let their imaginations run wild. It's usually a lot of fun and I frequently find myself drawn to these kinds of stories – which is exactly why I ended up reading "The Intergalactic Interloper." With a summary promising missing cats and two-headed alien turtles, I was immediately on board. And, having finished the book, it was well worth the read. While light on plot, "The Intergalactic interloper" is packed with fun and weird ideas and is immensely enjoyable. (4 out of 5 wands.)

Boiled down to basics, "The Intergalactic Interloper" is about Ollie’s search for his missing cat, Pirate. It is the discovery of Pirate’s disappearance that sets the story in motion and it’s the throughline that the novel follows. But I wouldn’t say it’s the novel’s focus. Instead, the novel spends most of its time tracking how this sizable group of characters react to seeing/knowing about Axzleprova, the previously mentioned two-headed alien turtle. Axzleprova doesn’t factor into the novel’s events all that much, but their influence is felt heavily throughout the story. They’re on Earth to study one of the planet’s dominant species to determine whether or not they qualify for inclusion in the greater galactic community. And, of course, their mission isn’t going well. On top of that, the two heads can’t agree on how best to execute their mission and their scenes read like an extraterrestrial version of The Odd Couple. It’s a lot of fun to read and they’re a very creative alien species to explore – which makes it a shame that we don’t get to spend a lot of time with them. They’re well-explored, but as a lover of interesting aliens, I couldn’t help but want more.

We do spend a lot of time with the rest of the characters, though. Namely - Ollie, Zora, Cassandra, and a few others. Lots of time is spent establishing who they are and what their place in the story is - though much of that doesn’t fully come into focus until the novel’s climax. I’m not normally one to enjoy plot-light stories, but "The Intergalactic Interloper"’s characters were so captivating that I found myself going along with the book despite the general lack of action. I was interested in how Ollie was going to find his cat and I was interested in the relationships between the characters and I was interested in how all of these different plot threads were going to come together by the book’s end. It felt similar to reading a good mystery; there were all of these seemingly disparate elements and you were just eagerly waiting for them to finally converge. It takes a good writer to balance so many threads and Heras pulls it off with remarkable ease. It’s clear that he spent a lot of time planning this book. Everything feels meticulously laid out, yet there’s an ease to how it all connects. The novel is paced very well, with information coming at exactly the right moment. All of the characters feel unique and fully-rounded and I found them all immediately captivating.

On the whole, nearly everything about "The Intergalactic Interloper" worked for me. I was hooked from page one and my attention was held until the novel ended. The whole thing is just a lot of fun. If I had one complaint, though, it’s that the book is a bit too short. There are so many different characters that it’s hard to feel like you’ve spent enough time with them to fully appreciate them in the novel’s short page-count. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing – there’s something to be said about respecting the length one’s story wants to be – but I couldn’t help wishing that I could spend more time with these characters in this world. Some of them appear for only a few chapters and it would’ve been nice to spend more time with them to fully appreciate the work Heras put into ensuring they felt and sounded unique. But, honestly, it’s a pretty minor problem and didn’t hamper my enjoyment much.

At the end of the day, I thoroughly enjoyed "The Intergalactic Interloper." It’s a quick read, but an entertaining one. Heras populates the novel with some well-rounded characters, a lot of humor, and some weird sci-fi ideas. Heras’ prose is easy to get into and easy to read and you’ll quickly find yourself transported into the world he’s created. "The Intergalactic Interloper" is one of those stories you’ll have a lot of fun engrossing yourself into. There’s nothing particularly challenging about it, but it’s so creative that it’s easy to get lost in it. I wholeheartedly recommend it to anyone who likes weird sci-fi or solid, character-driven stories. It’s a good read.

This was a fun comedy/science fiction blend, with an amusing cast of characters, and New York for a delightful backdrop. I would highly recommend this book to science fiction loving cat owners!

I received a copy of this book from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

This was a short read that speculates about aliens landing in New York.

I was surprised how little the aliens are actually in this story. They're not really a significant plot point until nearly the end of the book. I'm not sure who the demographic is for this book, but it wasn't my cup of tea. I thought it might be written in such a simple and accessible way that it was more for kids, but there's swearing and other things that might be scary for young readers. The ending wasn't quite what I expected and didn't feel particularly rewarding to me.

It's a fairly short read that looks at the lives of people who live in a building and a lost cat and how they intertwine.

This book was a lovely unexpected respite in our current pandemic.

A book set in the East Village in NYC in 1995, with the book sharing the different perspectives of people living near each other on 4th and ave A.
It is a short delightful dive into a large two headed turtle like alien duo called AxzleProva. The aliens considering cats the best species on earth is something I can get wholeheartedly get behind. They want to study cats more closely and disguise their spaceship on the roof as a water tower. I loved who different the stories were from the different perspectives.
My aunt and uncle lived very close to where the book is set, whom I would visit yearly. It was lovely to dip back into time without cell phones.
I recommend this book to anyone who loves sci-fi, funny humor and the odd way communities form in large cities (myself living in a metropolitan city as well).

I can't put my finger on what I didn't enjoy about this book; it just didn't click with me. I can't say the characters were unlikable, but I just didn't gel with them and wasn't really interested in what was going on with them, so it made each chapter a chore to get through. Someone else may enjoy this book; it just isn't isn't for me