3 stars. I really liked the premise of this book! Such a cute sci-fi story about friendship, family and adventure. It is Ella’s 12th birthday. She lives on an overpopulated, destroyed Earth, with her high-profile, smart, engineer family. Her and her family are leaving Earth to move to a new planet. Once they wake up from cryo-sleep, adventure ensues.

The first 3/4ths of this book was SOOOOO good! I loved the discussions around climate change, technological advancements, space travel, and AI. The author builds such a strong world, but then the last 1/4th was a bit confusing. Too many characters quickly introduced. Too many additional plot points left unsolved. It left me wondering if this will be a series.

While I enjoyed the story, there was one odd thing about the writing that pulled me out of the story– POV changes. The whole story is written in third person and then a couple times it switches to second person. But for some reason, it made me, as the reader, feel kinda dumb? Lol. After all that discussion about deep topics for a middle grade audience, then flipping the POV instead of taking the time to write a dialogue sequence…just weird.

If the author turns this into a series, I might try to read the second book to give it a second try.

Thank you to NetGalley and Victory Editing NetGalley Co-op for an eARC of this book in exchange for an honest review.

It didn't feel like it was targeted towards teens and YA. It felt much younger, as the writing felt stunted and clunky and blunt.

I had the opportunity to read "Ella and the Maze" by Selmon Beha, this book was released on the 25th of April.

First of all, the genres labeled are as followed: Humor and satire, teen and YA and Sci-fi and fantasy.
Humor and satire, I don't really see it. Also, the teen / YA also a no. Maybe a book for kids between 11 and 14. I wouldn't recommend reading above that age, since there are a lot of good teen /YA books out there.

The story was confusing, it's about space travel and artificial intelligence but there are to many things overlapping, the storytelling isn't that good. I'm really sorry to say that I'm only giving this 2 stars.
The last 20 pages I skimmed, so I know how the story ends.