Book review: Starseed by Liz Gruder

Kaila Guidry has always known she is different. When she meets Jordyn Stryker one day at school, she finds out just how different.

Jordyn was born and raised far from Earth, a starseed, one of six new students sent to Louisiana's Bush High to learn human ways. But Jordyn did not count on meeting a girl like Kaila.

When Kaila is pushed to her limit by high school bullying and cruelty, Jordyn awakens her to a new reality—and to love. But to prove herself, Kaila must look the other way as the real purposes of the starseed unfold.

As the horrific plan behind the starseed visit to Earth moves inexorably forward, Kaila and Jordan, caught in an impossible love, must determine where their true loyalties lie

Received as a free ARC from NetGalley.

This book was ridiculous.  That is the first thing that came to mind.  Usually I do try to find something good about a book, but no redeeming qualities come to mind this time around.  I’ll break it down.

The prose is painful.  It’s simple at best, and whenever a new character is introduced, it follows the “Character name, who was physical description, did action” formula.  Descriptions themselves are plentiful and put in at inappropriate times.  That’s called an info dump, ladies and gentlemen.

Speaking of info dumps, things happen much too quickly.  Before the book’s even a third over, we know everything about everything.  Heck, a lot of it can be deduced just from the first chapter.  Even when it’s trying to be mysterious and foreshadowey, it isn’t smooth at all.

Back to the prose, when it isn’t being painfully simple, it’s rife with really weird metaphors.  One on page thirty-two in particular stays with me.  “Her intuition nagged her, like a fish line caught on an alligator.”  Talk about subtle, huh?  Not.

The grownups are more than useless.  They’re enabling.  The English teacher lets the “preps” pick on him, the alien lady Physics teacher literally gave birth to all of them, and the minute Kaila decides that she needs a cell phone so all her ~new friends~ can talk to her, her grandfather takes her to the mall and buys her a top-of-the-line iPhone, not to mention a ton of new clothes and makeup.  Anything to “make her feel pretty” because apparently clothes from Wal-Mart are NOT acceptable in the judging atmosphere of high school.

Speaking of her high school, it feels like the author wanted to copy Mean Girls and fell really, really flat.  All the cool kids are called preps.  Her first friend, Melissa, even does a scene similar to when Cady is being introduced to all the cliques in the cafeteria.  Except where Mean Girls was doing a parody, Starseed is completely serious.  There’s even a line at one point that goes “And to feel emotion is to create war and die.” Don’t have sex kids, or you will get pregnant.  And die.

This is literally a tin hat conspiracy theorist book, except instead of tin foil, Kaila has to wear layers of black plastic around her head under a hat or wig.  To protect her mind, you know.  Because her mother was abducted by aliens and impregnated by them, so she’s half alien and they want her back.  That isn’t even a spoiler because, as I’ve said, everything in this book is revealed before it’s even half over.

And what would a book be without love at first sight?  As soon as she meets the love interest Jordyn, who’s also half alien, she’s in love.  She can’t even think of him without getting all warm inside.  Just another example of how shallow she is.  Not that it’s all that different from every other character in this thing.

As a final note, it falls flat in being “modern” as well.  Lines like “she’d rather listen to music on her iPod” and “but what she really liked was reading romance e-books on her iPad” pop up everywhere.  It’s cringe worthy.  What, did people at Apple give her sponsorship money as long as she name-dropped as often as possible?

Oh and the cover’s creepy.  I mean.  Look at it.  Paula Deen’s photoshop team has nothing on whoever did that number.