Thank you to netgalley and the publisher for giving me access to the advanced copy of this book to read.

After Mike's previous book, A Beginning at the End, I was keen to review another of Mike Chen's books. Light Years from Home hooked me with its mysterious book title and synopsis. It's a book to tug at your heartstrings and has wonderful pacing and imagery.

Thanks to Mike Chen and Harlequin Trade Publishing for an honest and voluntary review..

4 stars

I wanted to DNF this book about 25% of the way through but decided to rough it out in hopes the story would get better. I was wrong. This book is was a SLOG. The premise was super interesting but once again I am proven that I do not like sci-fi books, especially this one.

I’ve read all of Mike Chen’s books to date and really enjoyed them all. I loved his characters, but mostly enjoyed the premises of each book.

In Light Years From Home, I guess I thought I was getting more of the same with characters I loved and a science fiction story with space and aliens. Not so much. This is a story of a very dysfunctional family. Brother Jakob has been missing for 15 years. He shows up again out of the blue, and it takes most of the book for the story to finally detail why.

The characters were all very unlikable and the parts of the sci-fi bits were very few and far between. The bits about space and aliens were extremely interesting though. I just wish there had been more.

If you are more a family drama fan, you may enjoy this one more than I did.

I’ll continue reading Mike Chen’s books though because I really did enjoy his first few.

*Thank you to Harlequin Trade Publishing and NetGalley for the advance copy!*

In these times of 2022, it almost feels like contentment was never something that was available. Any memories of such an opportunity feels stretched back to such a bygone era that when I think of it, it’s distant and scrambled. In Light Years From Home, a family is brought something that seemed unattainable for over a decade: the arrival of a long missing family member. The memories of getting to that point aren’t clear in some characters’ cases, but despite how scrambled it is, it’s miraculous. The story showcases the family coming together in a way that feels messy through difficult circumstances but absolutely clean in its heartfelt humanity. Memories can be scrambled, emotions can peak and sink from the unreliability of human actions, but what makes Light Years From Home such a powerful book is that the mundane yet miraculous instance of finding hope after an expanse of hopelessness is always in the cards, no matter how much time has passed to make it seem like an unattainable wisp.

15 years ago, Jakob was abducted by aliens. His two sisters have different approaches to dealing with the disappearance. Kass dismisses the prospect and assumes he wasn’t abducted but just left as the unreliable person he was. Evie thinks otherwise, devoting her time to studying extraterrestrial life, trying to solve the mystery of her missing brother. Meanwhile, the parents are left in mental shambles. There doesn’t seem to be any developments concerning it for a while until at the start of the novel, Jakob arrives on Earth with a special mission. That mission embroils his sisters in it through incisive developments.


The characterization is where the story really shines. Whether it’s Evie’s ardent hope that what she’s dedicated her life to is a reality, Kassie’s fed-upness of her family, or the portrayal of Jakob who’s portrayed as making so much growth even though some of him is initially under a veil of mystery. It all works so well. Character arcs move at a pace that makes it so no one feels stuck in a rut. Just about everything feels like their choices align with their personality, making the plot move organically.


One thing to note is that as organic as the developments are, Light Years From Home definitely favors the exploration of familial bonds and human emotions over a rollicking plot. There are seeds for an explosive story here, but Mike Chen holds back, and it mostly worked for this reviewer. Although, there were some times when the vibrancy of the characters wasn’t enough to buoy some slower sections scattered throughout. Despite holding my engagement for the vast majority of the plot, I think it’s worth mentioning that this could very likely be lacking in speculative and action-packed elements to those in search of it.


Despite having a short supply of speculative elements, Light Years From Home is still imaginative through the way it’s able to carry its proceedings through an original voice and some brilliant plot points. It’s a novel full of love with a tenderness that might seem light years from our home. But the more I read about the familiar and cutting specificity of the characters, the more I realized that such a tenderness is still here–it just seems scrambled and distorted. Jakob goes on an interstellar journey, through many light years, surprising you with its direction but ultimately landing at a place that seems new until you realize it’s home.

The Math

Baseline Score: 8/10

Bonuses: +1 For its top-notch emotional intelligence.

Negatives: -1 For some slower and less imaginative chapters scattered sparingly.

Nerd Coefficient: 8/10

This sounds like exactly something I would love, but unfortunately this was a DNF for me. I tried multiple times but it did not hold my interest after the first few chapters. I can't put my finger on exactly why, but I guess this one was just not for me.

Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for the gifted eARC!

"The Shao family had become a textbook case study in trauma. But with aliens."

I first heard of Mike Chen on the Reading Glasses podcast, as he's a friend of their show. This book is a different sort of read because it really is more about this one family than it is a more traditional science fiction novel, and even the idea of whether it is a science fiction novel depends on which character you find most trustworthy.

It's been 15 years since Jakob disappeared on a family hike at a lake, and 14 years since the father died trying to look for him. Kass, the self proclaimed responsible one, is caring for her mother who has dementia, while Evie has become the host of a show about alien abductions. Evie and Jakob are twins and she's convinced he was abducted. Kass is pretty sure he is dead or being irresponsible, probably on drugs in some foreign country. Then Jakob returns, dot dot dot.

Literature is full of families torn apart by tragedy—death, war, crime. But what if the members of a family can’t agree on the cause of the tragedy that divides them?

In Mike Chen’s new novel, Light Years from Home, sisters Kass and Evie agree that their brother Jacob vanished 15 years ago. But did he runaway to party to his heart’s content, as Kass believes, or was he abducted by aliens, as Evie thinks? Their starkly different interpretations of the facts exacerbates the pain and tragedy of their brother’s disappearance, pushing the family to the point of breaking.

“One of the things that I really wanted to show was how a single moment can really change the trajectory of people's lives,” Chen says. Jacob’s disappearance “fundamentally changes the direction of this family. Kass has this attitude of ‘if no one else is going to fix it, I am going to fix it.’ And Evie has the same attitude, except she thinks about it as ‘I'm going to fix it by going with my dad on like these UFO hunts, and we're going to find my brother’ and their mom
wants to just move forward because that's the only way that she knows how to do it. … They've all gone in a completely different angle because this disaster has happened to them and none of them know the truth.”

Mike Chen, a three-time guest on the podcast, is the author of Here and Now and Then, A Beginning at the End, We Could be Heroes, and Star Wars: Brotherhood.

A family drama wrapped up in an alien abduction story. I am a mood reader and I picked this up in December, read a page, and put it down because it didn't grab me. I tried again and was hooked immediately! Mike Chen did an amazing job of making complex characters with a complicated family dynamic where I was still rooting for every single person, even (especially?) when they were acting in ways that pitted themselves against each other.

Thanks to NetGalley for the e-ARC!

I have learned that I cannot resist speculative fiction/science fiction by this point. Thus, I couldn't turn down the opportunity to read and review Light Years From Home by Mike Chen.

Evie Shao's family has never been perfect. For example, she and her sister were never best friends – they don't even talk. The events of their past make their relationship all the more complicated. First, their father and brother vanished into the night. While their father returned days later, their brother did not.

Fifteen years later, Evie's brother Jakob is finally back...but he's different, and he won't stop talking about an intergalactic war. Evie and her family must finally figure out how to work together to protect Jakob.

I loved the most about Light Years From Home because of how human it felt, despite the later dealings with aliens. Evie and the relationship (or lack thereof) she has with her family is something that I'm sure will resonate with many readers.

Much of the story is focused on these twisted and crumbling relationships and feelings. It's oddly beautiful watching Evie and the rest work their way through it all. It isn't an easy process, to be sure, but having a strong motivation to deal with it helps.

Okay, I say it's beautiful, but I mean beautifully human. The whole thing is an actual mess if we're going to be brutally honest here. Their relationship gets quite toxic at times, which may make readers uncomfortable. But again, that's human nature in a nutshell.

I really enjoyed the way Mike Chen used Light Years From Home and a science fiction backdrop as a way of exploring human nature and relationships. I'm looking forward to seeing more from this author.

Light Years From Home is a science-fiction book with a family drama at its heart.

The Shao family aren’t on speaking terms. Fifteen years ago, their father and brother vanished. Their father was found days later with an unusual story: he and his son Jakob were abducted by aliens. He had tried to bring him back but Jakob wouldn't leave the aliens who were fighting to save their world. Older sister Kass poo-pooed this idea and believes he ran off to Europe as his behavior had been erratic for a lot of his life. On the other hand, the younger sister Evie threw herself into finding Jakob pursuing alien theories and never giving up on Jakob. Suddenly, Evie's contacts see weird activity and Jakob is back. But what is to believe? Was he just slumming it for 15 years or was he really part of this alien army?

Reading this reminds me of K-PAX; is the main character truly a with aliens or is it all in his head? Is his sister seeing through her therapist lens and leaning too heavily on her personal ideas? Is Evie too open-minded because of her work on extraterrestrials? Mike Chen weaves all these ideas seamlessly keeping the reader guessing just what is the truth of the alien mystery.

Light Years From Home plays like a science fiction book but at its heart, it is a family drama. Kass is the only one left home with her mom who has dementia. Her brother and sister have left her and her father has died. Evie is mad because she feels has given Kass has up on Jakob. Jakob's sudden appearance shakes all the siblings to the core. Watching them work out their issues is where the beauty of this novel lies.

Like most of Chen's novels, there is human heart that is the core of his science fiction books, This is what makes them stand out in a world of alien and zombie books.

Disclaimer: I received this e-arc from the publisher. Thanks! All opinions are my own.

Book: Light Years From Home

Author: Mike Chen

Book Series: Standalone

Rating: 4/5

Diversity: very slight mention that a MC is attracted to women, character with dementia

Recommended For...: sci-fi, generational trauma, aliens

Publication Date: January 25, 2022

Genre: Sci-Fi

Age Relevance: 16+ (language, parental death, drugs, theft, mental health, gore)

Explanation of Above: There is cursing in the book. There is a mention of parental death and it is detailed. There are drugs mentioned occasionally in the book. There are a couple of scenes involving theft of property. Mental health is discussed a lot in the book, including dementia, schizophrenia is mentioned, and delusions of grandeur are discussed. There is some gore with blood shown in the book.

Publisher: Mira Books

Pages: 352

Synopsis: Every family has issues. Most can’t blame them on extraterrestrials.

Evie Shao and her sister, Kass, aren’t on speaking terms. Fifteen years ago on a family camping trip, their father and brother vanished. Their dad turned up days later, dehydrated and confused—and convinced he'd been abducted by aliens. Their brother, Jakob, remained missing. The women dealt with it very differently. Kass, suspecting her college-dropout twin simply ran off, became the rock of the family. Evie traded academics to pursue alien conspiracy theories, always looking for Jakob.

When Evie's UFO network uncovers a new event, she goes to investigate. And discovers Jakob is back. He's different—older, stranger, and talking of an intergalactic war—but the tensions between the siblings haven't changed at all. If the family is going to come together to help Jakob, then Kass and Evie are going to have to fix their issues, and fast. Because the FBI is after Jakob, and if their brother is telling the truth, possibly an entire space armada, too.

The perfect combination of action, imagination and heart, Light Years From Home is a touching drama about a challenge as difficult as saving the galaxy: making peace with your family…and yourself.

Review: For the most part I liked the book. I liked how the book discussed the strain of family relations when someone goes missing and I loved how it was in the context of an alien abduction. Mostly when we read sci-fi, most of the story is from the viewpoint of the abductee but in this book 90% of the POV is from the family members who are left behind and who are picking up the pieces. I’ve been getting into generational trauma a lot since the Encanto movie, and this book explores some themes of that as well (the strain the father put on the family is the same that the young sibling puts on the family and the mother who is left to pick up the pieces falls to the oldest sibling who does the same while the middle one is missing and has their own adventure free of family). While the trope used in the book is a well known one and the book is predictable, I loved how the reactions of the family wasn’t and it did keep me guessing until the end. The character development was well done, the world building was good, and the pacing was pretty good.

However, I did have a couple of issues. The book spent a lot of time going back and forth between the past and present, but the way that it was presented in the book was confusing at times. The ending was also rushed in my opinion.

Verdict: It was good!

This is the story of a family torn apart when the father and son are abducted by aliens, and the father returned, but not the son, and the family goes on without him. Everyone in the family finds their own way of accepting or not the reality of his absence. And then 20 years later - he's back. Now, there's a whole lot more to it than that, but for a while you're not sure if he really WAS abducted, or maybe was in an institution all this time. But something happens that everyone know for sure, so at least you aren't left hanging (I was a little concerned about this, and all ready to be ANGRY. Crisis averted). So the story flips midway from question to certainty, and flips the relationships in the family as well. Thank GOD! Cause in the first part of the book I wanted to slap all of them silly. I didn't like anybody. Even Jakob behaved like an idiot; why aliens would pick him up I do not know. These people talk but do not say anything, and never listen to anybody else. Granted, if they listened it would have been a much shorter book, but still.... You just want to shake them. But they do kind of get themselves together as the story progresses, so hang in there with them. Let me just say that once the results of an x-ray are shared, people will be much easier to get along with. Yes, no real spoilers there.
While there are science fiction elements here and there, this is domestic fiction. This is a story about family dynamics, about how a family changes over time after a sudden terrible unexplained catastrophe. I just wish the characters had been more interesting and less frustrating.
My copy was an ARC from NetGalley.

Just like all other Mike Chen books, I absolutely adored this one. The story of a family that was torn apart by an alien abduction years before, Chen manages to make the science fiction mostly background and truly focuses on the relationships and the emotions of his characters. It just HAPPENS to take place half in space. Perfect for the sci fi fan that wishes there were a little more interpersonal connections in their books, or just the reader who loves complete and satisfying character arcs.

Based on the two books I have now read by Mike Chen, I will definitely say this author has a unique perspective.

Family trauma and science fiction? Sign me up, always.

Can't wait to see what Chen does next.

Thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for the review copy!

Light Years From Home was a rollicking good ride from start to finish. What impressed me the most about this book was the complexity of its sci-fi plotting and the depth and nuance afforded to its main characters. Yes, this is an epic sci-fi adventure, but it is also a moving story about family, loss, and the aftermath of trauma. Kassie, Jakob, and Evie are all fierce yet vulnerable in their own ways, but they remain relatable despite interpersonal conflict and desperate choices. I could not recommend this book more highly!

This is both a sci-fi story, and a drama about family relationships. The two halves aren't all that well integrated in this case, but it's a very ambitious attempt.

Mike Chen’s Light Years from Home in audiobook format, published by Harlequin Audio and narrated by Emily Woo Zeller, is an entertaining listen. Multiple audiobook narrator awards winner Zeller gives a solid performance of several character voices. She deftly varies her pitch and tones between Kass, the older sister, and Evie, the youngest of the three siblings, along with Kass’s twin brother Jakob, the protagonist.
Although the inter-sibling squabbling is tiresome at first, it plays an important role in the characterizations. Author Mike Chen avoids confusing the listener as he transitions the plot from past to present, building past and present relationships between the siblings and their parents against the backstory of an intergalactic war. With the involvement of the Red Network and the FBI, the story moves forward at a steady and urgent pace.
Even with major doubts between clashing personalities, everything comes to an ultimate and satisfying conclusion.

My thanks to Harlequin Audio and NetGalley for review copies of this novel.

Light Years From Home, by Mike Chen, was an unexpected fun-filled ride. Although I enjoy science fiction movies, I usually do not read science fiction novels. I thought this book was about time travel. It is not. It is about unresolved family conflict against a background of intergalactic conflict. Chen's characters are nuanced and sympathetic. His prose is straightforward and unadorned, while still conveying authenticity. His pacing is absolutely flawless.
This is a story to read for pure fun. I am looking forward to Chen's other novels, one of which is already in my Kindle! Thanks to NetGalley and Mira Publishing for the opportunity to read and digital ARC. It was not only enjoyable; it opened an entirely new genre of fiction for me to pursue.

"Look, I know you’re about to go back into sci-fi world, but your space adventure had consequences. I mean, look at us. We are fucked-up.”“I understand.” Frosty breath rolled out with Jakob’s whisper. “Does knowing the truth make it any better?”"

Light Years from Home tells the story of a family reunited after Jakob returns after being missing and presumed dead for the last 15 years. He finds a family broken from the ordeal of him leaving. His father dead after looking for him nonstop. His sister devoted to analyzing atmospheric phenomena in the hopes of finding him again. His mother, not able to recognize one of her daughters.

This is not what I expected it to be, and I feel like this book couldn't figure out what it is meant to be. Is this a sci Fi story or a story about family? Well it's kind of both, and the combination just really didn't work for me. I was just never really sold by the story. Jakob's story of his time with the aliens wasn't fleshed out enough. His time with his family also needed more.

It just wasn't for me this time, but I'm sure there are those that will enjoy it more.

Thank you NetGalley and Harlequin Trade Publishing for giving me and advanced review copy in exchange for an honest review.