I liked this one! It's a cute cozy sci-fi with an adorable f/f couple. The characters were nicely written and fleshed out, but I wish we saw more of their history and more of an arc. But otherwise, this was well done! I see there will be a second coming out and I look forward to reading that.

I had a hard time starting this book and did not get very far. I hope to come back to it in the future, but I had to set it aside finally. I believe it could have used another revision before publication, but I can see the bones of something good as far as I got, at least. I will review it on goodreads when I'm able to return to it. For now, it's a DNF for me.

I received a free copy from the author through Netgalley and am voluntarily reviewing it.

This book caught my eye when I saw it on Netgalley and the blurb convinced me to give it a chance. I decided to read it when I was in the mood for a scifi romance book and dove right in. I wasn't sure what to expect from this book and it took me some time to get into it, but luckily after a while I grew more familiar with the writing and book. I ended up really enjoying this book and was sad to see it end and I am excited for more books in this series.

Where Starlight Burns is a f/f science fiction romance book set mostly on space stations. It has a very cozy daily life/ slice of life vibe, which I am not accustomed to seeing in this genre. It's low on drama and angst and the couple gets together relatively early in the book and the rest of the book they are together and facing whatever life throws at them together. I enjoyed this book and reading about these two women and their lives.

The writing style took some getting used to and some scenes lacked a bit of impact, but I felt this got better once I had gotten used to the writing style. One of the reasons I struggled to get into this book at first is that this book doesn't follow a lot of those expectations and tropes that are typical for this genre and books in general. And that's also one of the things that made me grow so fond of this book. It felt fresh and unique. And in a very cozy and comfortable way. I liked how this book had that slice of life vibe and it's set aboard a space station and there are all these unique alien creatures as well.

I really enjoyed following Cori and Aster and seeing how they dealt with things. I liked both characters and seeing how they dealt with things. Cori was so accepting of Aster and her job, which surprised me as I had expected that to be a major conflict point. Instead the whole book didn't have any romance drama, angst or conflict at all. And it was very comfortable to read about a couple being together and facing things together instead of conflict between them. I thought both were interesting characters that both had to face and still have to face some tough situations. I felt bad for Aster and what she had to do to get money, but I thought it was interesting how matter-of-fact her attitude seemed and she knew this is what she had to do and she handled it as well as she could. And Cori was supportive and accepting of Aster and the decision she made to do this work. Cori has some interesting backstory too that comes to light later in the book. I was happy for these two that they found each other. The last chapter was a great ending and ends things in a good place.

To summarize: While it took me some time to get into this book once I had gotten used to the writing style and the vibe of this book I ended up really enjoying this book. It's unique and fresh in a way I don't see often and I loved that about this book. The book doesn't follow a lot of trope and typical story plot scenarios. Instead it's a very cozy slice of life style story about two women who meet, fall in love and then face daily life together. The romance has no drama, angst or conflict and I really liked how straightforward it was. I enjoyed reading about Cori and Aster. They were both interesting characters and I liked how accepting Cori was of Aster and her work. Seeing them together and how much they care about the other was great to see and I enjoyed reading about their lives and was curious to see what was next for them. The setting is mostly aboard space stations and I really liked this and how the author brought the various space stations to life with all their own vibe. All in all I had a great time reading this book and I look forward to more of this author's books in the future!

Where Starlight Burns is about an unlikely pair - a doctor beginning a new life on Victory Station, hoping to leave her past behind, and a woman with a rather dangerous occupation that lands her in the hospital at least once a week. The more they see each other, the more their connection grows.

Even after reflecting on this book before posting, I’m still not quite sure how I feel about it. I thought Cori and Aster balanced each other well and they had great chemistry. I also liked that Cori was accepting of Aster being a sex worker and didn’t make her feel less than because of it. On the other hand, I hated how often Aster was injured, usually by alien clients that weren’t even interested in sex (so more like service work I guess?). I was glad that towards the middle she was able to find a less dangerous form of her work and eventually could give it up all together. There also wasn’t a ton of plot? Like there was no huge event that they had to overcome, just minor events sprinkled throughout. I kept waiting for something huge to happen and it never came. The ending was satisfying at least!

And, I mean, it’s technically unethical for a doc to date a patient, but it’s post-apocalypse and they’re on a space station so I’m gonna let it slide.

Thanks NetGalley and Kosmic Syren Books for this arc!

I liked this book, but it's wild to me that it was advertised as "cozy," given the significant plot of one of the leads getting hate crimed for doing sex work? Like the romance was cozy for sure, but maybe set a different tone for the sex work hate crime novel.

I enjoyed this from start to finish. Just a cozy romance with some espionage thrown in. I highly recommend this.

If you like your science fiction action-packed, this book is most definitely not for you. Rather it is about what happens when the action has ended and the heroine come out the other side with the rest of her life in front of her. Or heroines, I should say, as this book has two main characters, both female, who meet early on and fairly quickly enter into a committed romantic relationship.

Most of the book follows this relationship through its ups and then more ups. Despite both heroines having some emotional bagage, they have emerged as remarkably unscathed and stable human beings. Nothing ever happens to challenge their mutually supportive love and both act throughout as emotionally mature adults to the extent that it becomes somewhat boring. A little bit of spice but mostly endless descriptions of hugging and kissing take up paragrah after paragraph and every time something external looks to be about to disturb the loved-up bliss of our characters, they respond by relocating somewhere new, thus putting a firm lid on anything actually happening in this book.

I suspect the author of having fallen so completely in love with her characters to let anything bad happen to them, but stories need tension and challenges to properly engage the readers. This is, simply put, the “happily ever after” and though it might be pleasant to live, it is somewhat boring to read an entire book about.

On the positive list, it is quite well written and I enjoyed the world building enough to give it 3 stars.

This was an incredibly sweet and cozy sci-fi novel. It's vastly different from most sci-fi books I've read and it's a nice change of pace.

This is an easy read, I read it in basically one sitting and flew through it. The romance is very sweet, both of the MCs are great and I actually really did love the insta connection they had with each other. For me it worked for the characters and the story.

There wasn't a lot of plot in this and no high stakes or high-key situations but it was right for this book and it made it a charming read.

I really liked this one.

I really wanted to love this one.

The concept drew me in, a cozy SVU-fi sapphic romance? Sign me up.

However the insta love took me completely out of the story. And the overall pacing wasn’t right for me.

Where Starlight Burns has a deceptively cosy feel, even though both MCs have gone and are still going through rough times. It reads easily, almost lightly. The romance is very sweet and evens out the hard topics.

When she starts her new job on Victory Station, Dr. Corinth Nova, aka Cori, is shocked to find that her predecessor didn’t treat every patient with the same respect. Sex worker Aster Moss was considered low priority despite being a regular, because of the work she did and who her clients were.

A love story set far from Earth, in a future that allows the author to incorporate technologies and traditions unknown to the reader, Where Starlight Burns, plays on both the exoticism of space and the familiarity of romance. The latter is a tad rushed at times but I didn’t mind. I liked the MCs a lot, as individuals and together, and the side characters were good too. And I enjoyed the worldbuilding, the different planets, each with its own mood.

Thanks to Netgalley and Kosmic Syren Books for the copy in exchange for a review.

The concept of a cozy space opera f/f romance drew me in, but unfortunately this just didn’t deliver. I didn’t really feel any connection between Cori and Aster and feel like the romance moved WAY too quick with no real build up or tension. There are a lot of building blocks and possibility there, but this kind of fell flat for me.

It’s Cori’s first time on a station and she’s determined to make the most of it. Everything is new to her, from the smells, to the sounds, to the very sights of the station curving around her. Cori is the newest doctor in a small clinic catering to humans on the lowest level of the station and a red-headed woman is brought in near the end of the day. Aster is beautiful, yes, but she’s also unwilling to accept pain relief, shying away and surprised at any kindness.

Looking through Aster’s file, Cori discovers that the doctor in charge of the clinic has marked Aster as low priority and has refused her pain medication. Why? Because she’s a hooker. A prostitute of the lowest order. Aster isn’t licensed as a sex worker; instead, Aster works the dark lower decks of the station catering to aliens. Cori hears this, shrugs, and claims Aster as her patient, makes her high priority, and takes over her care. It doesn’t matter to her what Aster does, or why, just that she’s safe and healthy and not in pain.

And thus begins a love story spanning two space stations and a planet in a pleasant, slice-of-life love story between Cori and Aster. This is the first book in the Nova Moss Chronicles, a world in which Earth was destroyed by aliens, human separatists perform terrorist attacks on alien shops and areas, and Cori and Aster make soup, have long talks about books, and fall in love with one another.

Cori is a cheerful, friendly person, open and honest and always smiling. She’s a person whose seen shit, done shit, and is over everyone else’s shit. She’s a doctor, here to heal people regardless of who they are or how they got hurt. She’s here to live her life, to be happy, willing to open her heart and her mind to everyone and everything. Cori isn’t cruel and doesn’t hold a grudge, but she’s drawn a very firm line in the sand and if you cross it, she will gently, and efficiently, push you back.

Aster has a giant debt hanging over her, and sex work seemed to be the quickest way to cover it in the five years she has. This way, it’s her choice and her body; she’s putting no one else under obligations or difficulties, and when it’s done, she can rest knowing she did it herself. Aster feels no shame at what she does. Sex work for her is a means to an end, using the limited tools she has, and it’s something she’s good at. It’s the weight of other people’s stares and their contempt that hurt her, their ostracizing and disdain. When Cori treats Aster like a person, wants to go out in public with her, wants her to move in, Aster isn’t quick to say yes because she doesn’t want Cori to endure the same things. However, Cori shrugs and makes it clear it’s Aster, not her job, that matters. It’s Aster’s love, not the opinion of strangers she wants. And if one space station is the problem, they can move to another one. So long as they’re together. Cori’s certainty and love helps Aster remember that there’s an end to this. That, when the debt is paid, she wants someone there to celebrate it with. And Cori’s lack of judgement, her medical skills when Aster is hurt, and her love is all Aster needs at the end of the day.

Aster’s sex work is never gone into in any detail with her inhuman clients and she isn’t often injured. When she is, those injuries are played off as a side effect of the work she does … and I’m not quite certain that’s a tone I felt comfortable with. Something about how offhand it was that she got injured while working and it was just ignored — though it gave Cori a chance to play doctor and indulge in her need to care for Aster — felt a bit off putting. It felt as though it was expected and normal that, while being intimate with her clients, Aster would get bruises and injuries.

In the end, this is a quick read and decently written, however there was not enough real plot and a meandering pace. If you give it a try, I hope you enjoy it.

I love romance novels, I love space operas, and I have wanted very badly for space opera romance novels to be a proper thing for a long time now.

Unfortunately, Where Starlight Burns doesn’t meet the bar on either front.

With a central romance that is completely devoid of conflict or tension and wrapped up by the 30% mark, it simply does not give the romance reader anything to latch on to. The core conflict is set up to be Aster’s profession of extremely vaguely defined but very dangerous and socially unacceptable sex work, but Cori simply does not care about it— nor do either of them see Cori’s position as the only doctor on the station who will treat Aster’s injuries appropriately as any sort of impediment to them being together.

As a space opera it falls down for similar reasons. We have the setpieces for a space opera— alien and humans cohabitating on space stations, interspecies tension, a destroyed earth, a terrorist faction— but, disappointingly, none of them *move.* We never find out enough about any of these elements for them to be compelling in and of themselves, and no grand thread ties them together into a compelling plot.

Ultimately, Where Starlight Burns failed to hold my interest as either a romance or a space opera, and I would only recommend it if watching two lesbians be in a happy, fulfilling romantic and sexual relationship ~in space~ is a compelling premise on its own.

Thank you to the publisher and Netgalley for the eARC, provided in exchanged for an unbiased review!

Where Starlight Burns is Alicia Haberski’s recently released debut novel and is a cozy, spicy, sci-fi romance following Aster Moss and Cori Nova, two women living on a space station. Science fiction is more background and setting than anything for this story, with some alien elements coming into play later in the story. It’s quite short, only 169 pages, and as such is a quick read, both due to its length and Haberski’s writing style.

I enjoyed the characters of Cori and Aster and would have loved to have known more about their pasts, which are occasionally shown, personally, in not great enough of a capacity (especially for Cori, her background was so interesting!) and their romance was undeniably sweet. Though I love tenuous sapphic relationships, it’s nice to be able to kick back and enjoy a story about characters who love each other, especially in my preferred genre.

I was not expecting the level of sexual content going into this story, and, though I don’t really enjoy those sorts of scenes, they didn’t take away from the story and it was honestly interesting to see in a genre where I don’t expect to see a lot of explicit content. It is something to be aware of if it’s not your cup of tea, though.

My main struggles with this story came in its conflict, stakes, and pacing. Because of its length, I would have assumed there would be a single, large conflict looming over the characters that is revoked in the end. Instead of this, however, there are a series of smaller conflicts that are resolved with little to no effort on the part of the characters (most of the conflicts are interpersonal and most of the characters just shake hands amicably by the end of it) meaning that, by the end of the story, my expectations for stakes was low. Both of these aspects of the story severely affect the pacing, leading to a story that feels like it’s building up to something greater that never really comes.

In my opinion, the best way to read this story would be to read it as romance first, sci-fi maybe third or fourth. Many of the staples of science fiction, namely the stakes and conflict, are absent, but that doesn’t mean it wasn’t an enjoyable reading experience. Where Starlight Burns was ultimately a fun read. The characters felt well developed and, most importantly to me, it was a sweet, earnest depiction of queer love. I’d recommend it for anyone looking for a quick, cozy read with a little bit of sci-fi spice.

What a bizarrely gentle read. Extremely low-stakes to the point that I had no real connection to the characters. But I truly enjoyed the world building and all the aliens we encountered. Plus, a HEA is always a winner so the rating got bumped up to 4 star.

Thank you to Kosmic Syren Books and NetGalley for providing an eARC for an honest review.

I really wanted to like this book because the concept is great. Unfortunately, the execution falls flat, in my opinion.

First and foremost, the writing style has too much narrative distance for me, especially for a romance. It felt like a narrator was telling me about the actions of two people falling in love, where what I really like in a romance is to be in the characters' heads and bodies, feeling what they feel along with them. That element is definitely a matter of taste, so I tried to get past it and just enjoy the story as it was being told.

Unfortunately, that's where my second major issue comes in. Even romances need conflict, but at every potential obstacle the author introduced--and there were MANY great potential conflicts, from social snobbery to violent gangs and terroristic threats--Haberski lifts the lovers over each hurdle with ease or has them go around it entirely. At one point I checked to see how far into the book I was because it felt like it was getting awfully late to introduce a "main conflict". I was surprised to find that I was already halfway through. I suppose there are authors like Becky Chambers who manage to pull off great stories that have little to no conflict, but they still have tension of some sort that keeps the reader on the hook. Haberski's lovers are so tension-free despite the tension of their surroundings, their relationship almost feels like a caricature of the lesbian stereotype of extremely fast commitment.

Perhaps there are readers who want low-tension, low-stakes, "cozy" space operas with moderately spicy sex scenes. I hope Haberski finds her audience, but I'm afraid it's just not me.

Thanks to NetGalley and the author's self-pulishing imprint Kosmic Syren for access to an Advance Reading Copy in exchange for this honest review.

3,5 stars.

This was really cute and wholesome. I'm not the biggest fan of cozy stories but this one had enough stakes sprinkled in to keep my interest up. Also I just love seeing happy sapphic relationships. The worldbuilding was decent but not mind-blowingly original.

I also felt that the biggest obstacles for the characters were resolved too early in the story, so that the last 30% of the book was mostly just pure fluff, which is fine but I personally just prefer higher stakes.

Overall reading this made me happy and I will be keeping my eye out for the authors future work.

A great book for lovers of Travis Baldree and Becky Chambers. WHERE STARKIGHT BURNS reads a bit like hurt/comfort fanfiction, but not in a bad way. I loved the different family structures represented, and the exploration of sex work was also done well.

The problem with Sci-Fi books is that you have to do a lot of world building to get the reader interested in what is happening around the central characters. I believe the author tried, but didn't quite get there. This book had lots of potential to become the next big sci-fi sapphic book, but I really just saw it as a sapphic book that happened to be set in space.

The romance was great - the way that Cori cared for Aster and didn't judge her for what she did to make money made my heart flutter. The spicy scenes were 3 peppers. And I loved the happy ending.

Dr. Cori Nova embarks on her career in space after a lifetime of just living on planets. Victory Station’s reputation isn’t the greatest, but Cori is excited; she wants to help people and make a difference. On her first day, she meets Aster Moss, who quickly becomes her most frequent patient. Aster station hopped for years until she got in a massive amount of debt. Now, she serves as an independent escort to all manner of species, which lands her in the clinic pretty often. Facing prejudice from everyone except Cori, the two begin a tentative friendship that could potentially grow to more. With both of their pasts and Aster’s looming debt, could they build anything more than friendship?

I really enjoyed this book and tore through it quickly. It’s almost a cozy Sci-Fi/romance with some darker elements thrown in. I loved Cori and Aster’s friends to lovers story, and the people Aster meets in her exploits are a lot of fun. It’s a feel-good story all around, and it was a bright spot in my week.