Ghost Station (and Dead Silence, S. A. Barnes' previous Scifi title) is instantly interesting and bingeable. Barnes feeds you info on a need-to-know basis, so no fear of choking down unnecessary interplanetary info. Just kick back and enjoy how a semi self-aware Psychologist, with daddy issues (hell, all around family issues) navigates her first outting with a tense, fractured R&E crew, new tech and potential hallucinations, all while on an abandoned planet in extreme isolation.
Barnes is quickly becoming a favorite author on the Scifi front. Bonus points for the horror-mystery additions.
An all around good time.

Thanks to NetGalley and Tor Nightfire for the eARC!

Ghost Station is the latest scifi horror book by S.A. Barnes. It follows psychologist Dr. Ophelia Bray as she is assigned to assist an exploration crew. When a member of the crew is murdered, she is set to investigate the cause of the latest violence. She questions it's connection to ERS, a mental disease that has caused several deaths. Unfortunately, answers don't always come quickly as she and the crew work together.

Overall, it's a good read. There is plenty of twists and turns laced into a dark and sinister atmosphere. Like Barnes previous book, the plot is well thought out with plenty of surprises. The pacing does a move a bit slower than Barnes previous endeavor, Dead Silence, but a lot of the same elements that made that book such a hit are still there. I really enjoyed the book. It's very readable especially for those who are just recently introduced to space horror. The characters are interesting and I think Bray has a lot of depth and even growth through the story. It's definitely one we will add to our library shelves.

3.5/5!

Books I don’t read enough of: space horror!

I absolutely love when a horror/mystery/thriller book is set in space. The level of claustrophobia is usually at its peak in these stories and I feel like that makes them extra exciting for me to read.

A few years ago I read Barnes’ book Dead Silence and instantly clicked with her writing style, so Ghost Station made it to my most anticipated reads list for 2024 and it did not disappoint!

Ghost Station is a claustrophobic and tense story told through the eyes of Dr. Ophelia Bray. Our narrator has some secrets she wants to keep hidden that make her at times an unreliable narrator for readers. She’s not the only one hiding something. Turns out the crew she’s been assigned to has some baggage of their own and the deserted location they’ve been sent to explore has a few dark reveals up its sleeve as well.

I loved the sense of dread that oozed through this story. I found myself thinking about what might happen next or what the crew would find next when I wasn’t reading the book. Despite the overall slower pace to this story, I was able to fly through the pages and consume large chunks when I would pick it up. The pacing is certainly something that won’t be for everyone, but I think if you know about it upfront it’ll help to level expectations.

This is more of a quiet horror story without any gore or jump scares waiting for readers. Those who enjoy a more psychologically-based and isolated location story will enjoy this one!

4.5 Stars. S.A. Barnes has done it again! Ghost Station is a creepy, unsettling space horror that will keep you guessing.

Dr. Ophelia Bray has committed her life to studying/preventing ERS, a condition that can lead to violence and self-harm. Ophelia thinks it’s necessary to help patients on board spacecraft rather than treat then when they return home, so she volunteers to join the crew of Resilience who has just lost a member due to suspected ERS. The crew lands on Lyria 393-C to explore and document any changes to the planet. Immediately, Ophelia feels a sense of wrongness as they set up at the ghost station.

I loved how creepy this book was. Setting was key here and Barnes really created an unsettling environment where it was impossible to feel safe. Whether inside the ghost station or exploring the planet you just don’t get a respite. There was also quite a bit of body horror! It was done well and quite gross, which I am a fan of. One of the things that kept this from being a true 5 star is that I found the plot a bit slow to start. Once the action started picking up I couldn’t put it down.

I really liked this author’s first novel, Dead Silence, but I think this one was even better. I’ll definitely read from this author again and can’t wait for their next novel. Thank you to Tor and NetGalley for a review copy.

"But I think if you let the past haunt you, if you can't accept it, it's that much harder to make better choices in the future."

Ghost Station by S.A. Barnes is my first read by them, and while I don't know what I was truly expecting, only knowing that it was a space exploration with a death, I felt like it was way more naturally science fiction than horror.

I did really enjoy Barne's writing style, but I think the main problem I had with Ghost Station was the pacing. The summary makes the main twist out to be near the beginning of the book, when it doesn't happen until at least halfway through. I feel like it had more of a focus on the team, and while the team is an important part, until around 60% in, the true danger wasn't a huge part of it yet.

I felt a certain disconnect with Ophelia, a psychologist who's sent to help with the team. To help escape her trauma, she comes along with the team to explore a planet, and is sucked right back in. There could've been a lot more understanding coming from both sides of her coming along, especially from Ophelia herself.

Ethan was probably my fav character. He just wants to help, and make the most out of a bad situation, but after the team's lies and deception, he feels frustrated and sad cause he blames himself for everything that's happened. He's just a huge teddy bear, be honest.

Overall, if you're a fan of sci-fi, horror, body horror, and Barnes, you will enjoy Ghost Station.

tw // Death, Blood, Violence, Gun violence, Medical content, Suicide, Domestic abuse, Dementia, Child death, Body horror

#space #sciencefiction #scifi #scifihorror

Strange, deadly happenings on Lyria 393-C

Dr. Ophelia Bray is put into cold sleep on Earth in 2199 and wakes up three months later onboard the exploration-short duration vessel Resilience. She is a psychologist and will be working with the team, looking for signs of ERS, a syndrome that manifests with sleep deprivation, depression, violence, and sometimes even a psychotic break or insanity.

Reclamation and Exploration Team #356 heads to the surface of Lyria 393-C to document and survey this ancient planet with nonhuman remains that was actually deserted by a previous R&E team.

From the beginning there are inexplicable happenings and Bray and the rest of the team fear for their lives.

Oh, and Dr. Bray has quite a backstory too.

Sci fi, horror, and psychological thriller all rolled into one.

I received this Digital Review Copy from Tor Nightfire through Net Galley in the hopes that I would read it and leave an unbiased review. This is that review.

I started this in ebook format and ended up finishing it on audio. Loved the story and the creepy vibes. It reminded me of The Deep by Nick Cutter, which is a favorite of mine. I submitted a longer review with NetGalley on the audiobook I requested of this title.

I really enjoyed Ghost Station by S.A. Barnes. This is the first book I've read by the author, and I plan on purchasing her previous book to read very soon! This book was very compelling, and I didn't want to put it down. I can definitely see this being made into a movie. There were multiple layers of mystery, and each was skillfully handled so that I was not disappointed with any major unanswered questions. I do wish this was the start of a series, because I'd love to know more about the aliens (both of them?). But, not knowing more does not detract from the story as a whole. Overall, this was a great book, and I will probably go out and purchase it to add to my personal library.

*Thank you Netgalley for giving me an ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review

First, I want to say that I LOVED S. A. Barnes first book, Dead Silence. When I saw that Barnes had another sci-fi horror book coming out, I was SO excited!! I didn’t even look at the plot blurb, it didn’t matter. I was going to read this no matter what it said. 😀

So I went into Ghost Station blind. I’m not sure what I was expecting? Alien ghosts maybe? Probably- ghost IS in the title after all…. But no, not alien ghosts… in fact, I’m honestly not really sure what was going on in this book?

Don’t get me wrong. I enjoyed Ghost Station a lot. The story starts off pretty slow burn, so buckle up. It felt like the author does a nice job building a creepy, tense atmosphere. The plot is more character driven and less about answers as to WTF is going on….

In fact, the “answers” are pretty ambiguous. Normally I’m not a really big fan of ambiguous answers, but Barnes pulls it off, in a nightmare fuel sort of way. Alien bugs? Alien tech? What happened on this planet?? Zero clue but I loved every drama llama moment of it (well almost every moment, see spoiler below)!!

Like I said earlier, Ghost Station is more about the characters. Trauma, grief, guilt, stress all thrown in a blender and added to this creepy murder planet full of weird going ons. Maybe the answers are a hare ambiguous, but I was invested in all the human and alien going ons. Is it horror though? HMMMMMMMM…….

The title does feel a little bit of a misnomer….? I mean… I get the name, but I don’t know, it just doesn’t fit well with the over all story? :/

SPOILER ALERT BELOW!!!!!

Over all, I enjoyed this book…. BUT, that ending… we need to talk about that for a second. I gotta say, not loving the fact that the characters are cured off page in such an abrupt fashion! Like, all this crazy stuff going on, everyone is infected with alien whatsit, and…. everyone just gets on the ship and leaves? :/ With no cares given about possibly infecting other people or planets with this… whatever it is??? And then it’s ok because everyone is just…. mostly cured super duper easy while they literally slept it off?? Off page?? Between chapters?? :/ HUH. Don’t love that. What happened? Did the author run out of time on her deadline and have to just END things quickly or something? :/ Because that’s definitely what it feels like…

*Sigh* Aside from that choice on the ending, I do like Ghost Station, slow pacing and misplaced title and all. This one is not as good as the author’s first book. I don’t like to compare the two, but it was a little hard not to. Dead Silence was SOOOOOOOO good, but Ghost Station just felt…. it’s good. You know? I was still entertained and had fun reading the book, and I will continue to read future work by S. A. Barnes. 🙂

This book did not really do it for me. I tried to be engaged but the storyline is a bit blah and hard to get into. Ophelia Bray is a psychologist specializing in the study and prevention of ERS, a space-based condition, similar to PTSD, that can lead to mental deterioration and violence. Dr. Bray is assigned to join a small exploration crew as they journey to an ancient, abandoned planet. Unfortunately, it doesn't take Ophelia long to realize that the new crew isn't exactly excited to have her aboard. Once again, this novel felt like a thriller hiding inside horror marketing. The narrative style and the meat of the story leaned too heavily into a tropey thriller narrative.
I would mind less if it was an engaging thriller but it was pretty forgettable without a lot of punch. I hoped to love this one and am ultimately disappointed that it turned out to be only fine

My thanks to Tor Publishing, S.A. Barnes and Netgalley.

3.5

This was my first book by SA Barnes, and I went into this book only knowing it was about the exploration of a space crew. I’d classify the book as a slower paced scifi thriller, where there is suspense and tension without the high octane pacing many thrillers tend to have. Instead, there’s an excellent sense of slow burn claustrophobia, that unsettling creeping dread that I usually associate with literary horror.

I will say that the larger twists felt obvious to me, so there weren’t any big surprising moments, but that doesn’t mean I didn’t enjoy the journey!

Some aspects I enjoyed:

⁃ Complicated interpersonal dynamics among the crew members, and the secrets being kept from each other
⁃ A character finally facing and processing repressed trauma
⁃ Confrontation of mental health stigma
⁃ Societal problems caused by capitalism and the impacts this has on the crew specifically
⁃ Flawed characters who are so aware of their flaws but struggle to overcome them
⁃ Circumstances that make the characters question what is real and what isn’t

Other than a bit more twisty suspense, one thing I wanted was a more mature hint the one potential romantic attachment in the book. It felt a bit juvenile, and every time the characters finally got vulnerable with each other and started to open up, something happened that overshadowed the depth that could have been there. Instead it felt surface level, and I would have liked to see more depth in all of the crew relationships over the course of the book.

Otherwise I enjoyed this book and would definitely read more from this author! Thanks so much to Tor/Forge and Netgalley for the advanced copy of the book!

I would like to thank NetGalley and Tor Publishing Group for allowing me to read an ARC of this book.

Ghost Station is the author's follow-up novel to the 2022 hit Dead Silence, and fans of that one will find great pleasure in reading this one. Straddling the genres of Space Horror and Sc-Fi/Fantasy, Ghost Station is set on an ancient alien planet with a creepy and unsettling atmosphere and foreboding sense of dread and impending doom.

The story focuses on a psychologist, Dr. Ophelia Bray, who has been assigned to a team exploring an abandoned planet. Dr. Bray's specialty is the study and prevention of ERS (Eckhart-Reiser syndrome), which causes people to hallucinate, hear voices, and sometimes even go mad with violence and/or suicide. The crew doesn't seem to like Dr. Bray much and mostly ignore her attempts to help them, or her warnings that their work investigating the planet may increase their chances of ERS. The more the crew investigate, the stranger things start to get. The crew begins to show signs of ERS one by one, and they begin to think they may not be alone on the planet after all. They're going to have to work together and trust each other if they want to survive and escape alive.

This book is a slow burn, and the narrative is drawn out over the pages to an ending that really ramps up in the last few chapters and a satisfying epilogue. Fans of the author and space horror (and body horror) will love this book, and I will be recommending it to my horror book club and librarian friends.

This was absolutely chilling and creepy and I enjoyed it but it wasn’t perfect. This space horror story was engaging but a bit too slow for my taste. This was a tense sci-fi novel but I needed more. It picked up a bit towards the middle and I was satisfied with the ending, but I preferred this on audio vs physically reading it.

Thank you NetGalley and Tor Nightfire for this ARC.

I absolutely loved Dead Silence, I couldn't wait to read another book by this author and once I knew I got it as an arc was so excited! Her writing is very atmospheric like you are in the story yourself experiencing everything that is going on. I loved every second of this book! It did kind of feel like dead silence but different to where it was still so enjoyable. I can't wait to see what she has in store for us next!

This is my first S.A. Barnes novel and I am a fan.

In the unspecified future, space exploration is a huge money making endeavor and there are two corporations that basically own the market. ERS is a space base condition that can lead to disaster and is a death sentence for someone's career. There's a famous case that ended with the brutal murders of 29 people and since, it's something that nobody wants to be associated with. Dr. Ophelia Bray is a psychologist that specifically works in the study and prevention of ERS in those that work in the space exploration field. After Ophelia experiences a work-related tragedy she decides to take her expertise on site. She's assigned to a crew that also has had a tragedy among them and soon finds herself in space with a group of people that clearly don't trust her or want her there. As they get to the planet they will be exploring things start to get odd - the previous crew clearly made a hasty exit from the planet. Then a member of the crew is found dead in a gruesome way and things go from odd to a nightmare. The crew must work together to find out what is going on but when everyone has secrets it's hard to know who to trust - especially when you might not even be able to trust yourself.

This book has layers! Set in the future it immediately gets you acclimated to this futuristic world. Though it's futuristic there are a lot of parallels to present day so it's easy to connect to. Dr. Ophelia Bray is the FMC that has layers herself. As you get to know her background, family, and motivations you get more questions surrounding Ophelia. Not only has Ophelia experienced a tragedy, the team she is assigned to has as well. This has left the team on edge and even more reluctant to trust Ophelia since psychologists can end someone's career without even meaning to. Any mention of ERS or symptoms that could lead to ERS can easily put someone out of work in the space exploration field.

ERS itself is interesting. It reminds me of PTSD but stemming more from isolation instead of trauma. Which space would be pretty isolating I would think. How S.A. Barnes creates this whole mental illness into the book was so interesting and gave the book more tension. The motivation behind Ophelia's study of it is also so intriguing, though that's part of the mystery of Ophelia that you learn about as the book goes on. Every character is interesting; there are things that make you like them or hate them but every one of them had me wondering what they're hiding.

Overall the book is a great blending of sci-fi and horror. There's some body horror along with thriller vibes. Also, if you don't trust big corporations and those that run it this book won't make you feel hopeful for the future.

The premise of this book seems so coo! I usually enjoy Sci-Fi and horror is my preferred genre so perhaps My expectations were too high going in. Overall I found Ophelia to be juvenile and almost unbearable and the plot to drag on. This book is so long and could’ve been condensed significantly. Thank you to NetGalley for an advanced copy of this book.

3.25 stars

Thank you to NetGalley, the publisher, and the author for this ARC in exchange for an honest review!

I am sad to say that I was disappointed! I have loved this authors previous book, Dead Silence, so when I saw the cover and description for Ghost Station, I was so excited. Unfortunately, it was just too slow and repetitive for me. I had a hard time staying focused.

I will read other works by this author even though this one was not my favorite.

Spoilers ahead.

Billed as scif-fi horror, Ghost Station is set in ye hyper-capitalist, space-faring future, you know the drill. The rich live in luxury, the poor are but fodder for vast corporations, as they labour on the outskirts of space, where the danger, isolation and poor working conditions make them susceptible to Eckhart-Reiser syndrome. Basically, contagious PTSD. Our heroine is Dr Ophelia Bray, a scion of the rich and powerful Bray family, albeit one with a mysterious past, who works as a psychologist for one of her family's competitors. Her specialty is helping spacers who have been diagnosed with ERS but when one of her clients commits suicide unexpectedly she inveigles her way onto an active exploration vessel in the hope of being able to treat ERS in the field.

Needless to say the crew of said vessel, who have recently suffered a loss in the field, are less than receptive to having a psychologist on board, still less one with the surname Bray. But then their mission takes them to a previously abandoned planet--a ghost planet, do you see--and once strange things began to happen upon it Ophelia, her name and her history, are the last thing the crew needs to worry about.

So, Ghost Planet is a slow, slow burn which, for me, mostly worked, although I've seen some reviews where the reader grew a little impatient with the pacing and I can, in fairness, see that too. If, however, you like your horror creeping and your dread burgeoning, the book really pulls off an ever-escalating sense of unease, as questions about the crew--their interpersonal dynamics, what happened with their dead comrade--and Ophelia herself keep piling up. For at least the first half of the story, I was genuinely gripped, caught up in the succession of mini-mysteries, and appreciative of way the narrative spins out the tensions inherent in its various themes: from the personal and abstract (like identity, family, mental health, grief and guilt) to the more political (like capitalism and commodification) to the very literal (being isolated on alien world where strange shit is going down).

It's ambitious and intriguing but, in the end--and, as ever, my judgement is subjective--I wasn't wholly sure it pulled it all together in a way that paid off the intensity of the build up. I think perhaps part of the, well, I hesitate to call it a problem because it's clearly a deliberate choice and may well work better for other readers, but something I struggled to balance for myself was the weight of more abstract horror themes with the whole scary alien planet side of things. Ophelia, for example, is the walking embodiment of this. She's a very vulnerable, very flawed character, and her training as a psychologist gives her a degree of self-awareness that allows her to articulate those vulnerabilities and flaws very directly (and, even, to be fair, relatably)

<blockquote>Wanting— needing— to be needed, relied on by authority, is her weak spot. It’s what both motivates and terrifies her, which, in psychotherapy world, makes her double the mess.</blockquote>

Or

<blockquote>She wants to be respected, needed, but at the same time she’s so fucking soft for the slightest display of affection. She despises that about herself. Being aware of it doesn’t help, either.</blockquote>

And while this, from a certain perspective, makes her the perfect protagonist of a horror novel (i.e. constantly falling apart at the seams, questioning her own mind a la the governess in The Turn of the Screw) it also makes her a slightly frustrating one, constantly locked in cycle of self-doubt, and solipsistically obsessed with her own insecurities. What's extra difficult about this, is that this is sort of the plot? Or at least the major emotional arc of the book: yes, it's about a weird empty alien planet, but it's also, in a more meaningful sense, about recovery from abuse. It's easy enough to guess Ophelia's history, from almost the second a Dark Event of the Past is mentioned, but there are interesting nuances to it. In this context, the Ophelia we're stuck with for three hundred pages makes a lot of sense, and I feel uncomfortable about my impatience with her.

By a similar token, I feel uncomfortable discussing Ophelia as ... I guess ... a professional being, because I feel that intersects with gender in really complicated, potentially problematic ways. Like, I think "professionalism" is mostly an arbitrary standard we apply to people who don't behave how we think we should, without really ever interrogating the why of those expectations. And in the context of a female character (or, y'know, an actual woman living in the world) it can often boil down to gender-coded things like emotion = bad, or self-doubt is weakness, or talking < action.

For very good reasons, and as already discussed, Ophelia is very in her feels for basically the whole book, the downside of which we never really see her do very much actual therapy or actually help anyone ever. To be fair, she doesn't get much opportunity (the crew are openly hostile to her initially and then shit hits the fan, so therapy kind of naturally becomes a low priority) but we also see her continually make choices driven by selfishness and guilt, choices that often directly the people around her, like going on the mission in the first place (since she's not qualified or experienced in space exploration type stuff), and hiding her past from the crew when it turns out her past might be very, very relevant to what's happening. Again, these choices are understandable, and driven by trauma, but that doesn't make them right. And while I absolutely do not expect fictional characters to always do the "right" thing, nor do I see a character's choices as reflective of the author in any way, I do wish I'd seen Ophelia maybe considering the whole life-or-deathness of the situation a bit more?

And, again, it gets complicated because the protagonist being a hot mess is a trope of certain kinds of horror, and Ghost Station, even though it's firmly in SF space, also has some gothic vibes to it. Plus, off the top of my head, I can list reams of fictional therapists who happen to be men who are fucking dreadful at their job (the guy from In Treatment, Shrinking, Hannibal, the last goes on): therapist overwhelmed by their own frail humanity is ALSO a trope. With Ophelia, however, I kept struggling. And, y'know, maybe that's, um misogyny which I am, at least, currently trying to examine. But I also felt that, between her history, her trauma, the mission being a disaster, and her last patient having committed suicide, the book had, maybe circumstantially more than anything, stacked the deck against her.

It doesn't help that she is the also the, err, victim of an extremely juvenile-feeling romance arc. Well, arc might be too strong a word, since it's mostly Ophelia staring dreamily at the mission captain (a sexy-gruff bloke called Ethan Severin) and then chiding herself for being unprofessional. As attraction-dynamics go, it's not my favourite, especially because it starts off with Severin being fairly harsh and impatient with Ophelia (for understandable reasons--he doesn't want a shrink on the mission, and she's kind of a liability since she isn't trained for the work they do) and she continues to think he's the sex. Like most of the emotional themes of the novel, this is tied into her trauma (she has daddy issues and wants to be approved of by people in positions of authority) but it still grated on me.

Of course, I'm a romance reader, so I probably want more from a romance arc than is necessarily accommodated by non-romance genres, but I genuinely felt that this brought nothing to the book, or to either character. We have enough examples of Ophelia being compromised in her priorities/decision-making, it undermines Ethan coming to respect and understand her because maybe he doesn't, in fact, respect and understand her, maybe he just fancies her, and is only going out of his way for her because of that, and basically substitutes what feels like a relatively clichéd romance-ish dynamic for what could have been a more meaningful platonic/collegiate one. I think part of the reason I'm grumbling about this was that, by the time we reach a point that Ethan and Ophelia are being honest with each other, I felt the book--and the characters--had some interesting things to say about trauma and privilege and survival. It's just it was over-shadowed by all the "he's so mean to me but he's so sexy" that had preceded it.

And this maybe brings me round to why Ghost Station didn't hit for me quite as hard as perhaps it could have? There's such a lot going on that all it ended up feeling quite abbreviated--like there isn't time for Ophelia to establish herself as, um, useful? good at her job? before they're at alien planet panic stations, the attraction between Ophelia and Severin feels surface-level and fairly dull, and we barely have time to meet the crew (there's the hot captain, the nice one, the annoying one, the angry one, the dead one, and the other one) before things are going wrong and everyone is falling apart. Which feels like a weird thing to be complaining about in a story that is also such a slow burn. But I think I would have been more engaged in the second half of the book, if I'd been given more space to care in the first half. I mean Birch (the angry one) is probably the most significant character outside of Ophelia and Severin. He has genuine reason to hate Ophelia, or at least Ophelia's family, and his backstory is important thematically as well as just as a means of conveying information about the setting. But he and Ophelia have maybe two private conversations and, while I'm definitely not saying she should have been able to win him over with her leet therapy skillz, it makes it hard to differentiate between Birch Is Furious For Legitimate Reasons That Could Maybe Be Acknowledged In Some Way and Birch Is Furious Because Creepy Shit Is Going Down And Everyone Is Losing Their Marbles.

I feel a little bad for having spent so long picking at this book; in all honesty, some of it is me trying to figure why I didn't, end up, responding to Ghost Station as positively as I wanted to. This doesn't mean there isn't a lot to admire here, though. Ophelia, irrespective of my personal feelings, genuinely came across as a complex and nuanced portrait of a person living with trauma both acknowledged and unacknowledged. The writing, in general, is crisp, clean and engaging. The atmosphere is deliciously ominous and the world, with its corporations and space PTSD, fascinating. Just to dive fully into spoiler territory, this is ultimately one of those situations where capitalism is the true horror, ah do you see, and the ways the book goes about exploring that--the consequence of reducing people to a resource--felt both plausible and genuinely chilling. In light of this, I still haven't decided if, for me, the ending was a bit of a cop-out. But then again, perhaps not. After all, those most capable of exploiting capitalist systems to their own advantage--or on this occasion to save their arses--are those already benefiting from them. Which, for all her guilt and trauma, Ophelia is.

This is a space horror and very futuristic.
Our main character Dr. Ophelia Bray is a psychologist who has spent her life studying and preventing ERS. Which is a space condition that overtakes their reality. They can become highly paranoid and unpredictable.

The story starts with Ophelia getting a new job with a space crew. She is to fly out with them to an uninhabited planet to survey and grab samples. It’s a pretty routine mission. However Ophelia is unwanted on this mission because her main reason for being there is to prevent ERS and help the crew with their mental health while they grieve a lost crew member from their last mission.
They think she’s there to spy on them and paranoia seems to be setting in.

Cons: there is a big part of the story that stays pretty mysterious and I wish we could’ve had some answers about it.
Pros: I loved the creepy atmosphere. It had an ick factor that involves creepy crawly things. Another plus in my opinion.
I did enjoy this novel and if you liked the other book by this author I think you’ll like this too.

This was one of my most anticipated books of the year and it did not disappoint! I really enjoyed this author's previous novel, but it was just missing ~something~ and this book has that ~something~! Everytime I sat down to read this book I had a hard time stopping because every single chapter left me wanting more. Space horror is something that will always scare me, not knowing what or who is out there just leaves my skin crawling, and this author does that so well. I just loved this book and I know I will keep thinking about it for a very long time!