Book Review: The Starriest Summer by Adelle Yeung

 


Title: The Starriest Summer
Author: Adelle Yeung
Paperback: 377 pages
Publisher: Indigo Platinum Press (December 1st 2015)
Genre: Young Adult, Fantasy, Contemporary
Read: eBook
Stars: ***/5
Buy On: Amazon India | Amazon US

 

Summary:

(Goodreads)

Fifteen-year-old Michelle saves the world on a daily basis…with her trusty video game controller, of course! Naturally, she jumps at the chance to play an experimental virtual reality game.

The beautiful fantasy world of Starrs? Check. The power to mold matter? Check. No reset button? Wait, she didn’t sign up for this!

Turns out Starrs is really real, and to make matters worse, Michelle’s interference awakens the Cycle of the Six Moons, a series of devastating trials that will devour the universe.

Fighting the apocalypse was way easier when danger stayed on the other side of the screen, but Michelle finds a secret weapon in her new-found powers. She uses them to rescue the crown prince of a powerful magic kingdom from their sworn enemies, a technologically-advanced cult that strives to eradicate magical blood.

Michelle starts to fall for Prince Jayse, the only one who believes Michelle to be a savior rather than a curse. But not even video games could prepare her for what the cult has in store for them…

 

My Review:

Note: Thanks Adelle Yeung and YA Bound Book Tours for offering me this book to read and review :)

Cover: Eye-catchy!

Paper and font: Easy on the eyes!

Readability, language: Simple on the mind.

Why did I choose this book: I love watching Che play story based video games, so a book based on getting sucked into a game just had to be read!

Michelle gets pulled into a different world when she starts to play a virtual reality game. Only this isn’t a game but is real and Michelle’s arriving in this world has set of a chain of events that could end the world. She has to team up and save the world.

The title The Starriest Summer is appropriate considering the book is predominantly set in the Starrs world. The cover is attractive and caught my eye. I couldn’t make much sense of the characters on the cover initially but looking at the cover after completing the book makes it all clear. The blurb is enticing and got me interested.

I’ve never come across a plot like this before so it was a refreshing find. I really like the idea of falling into a video game and becoming an actual part of the game. The plot is clear, as in Michelle has to save the Starrs World but the whole thing about the Cycle of the Six Moons was complicated and I’m still confused about it.

The world of Starrs has been created well and I found it very believable. Yeung’s descriptions of the terrain made it easy to visualise the world as I read the book. It almost felt like watching someone play a story-based video game.

The main character is Michelle but she is supported by a bunch of primary, secondary and tertiary characters. The characters are well fleshed out and described rather in detail too but somehow some things just felt odd for me in my head. Some characteristics and even clothes just didn’t suit the characters I had drawn up in my head. That said, I must add that Michelle felt real with her fears and hang-ups. Getting pulled into the game doesn’t make her a superhero and I liked that.

The story follows a three act structure and is split into 3 parts, with the conflict clear in the first few pages. The flow of the story is good and so is the pace, I found myself wanting to read constantly to know what would happen next. But the pace is also constant and there is no build up to climax, it doesn’t feel like a climax, but that might be because it is to be a series?

The language used is simple and easy to read but I think the book could have done with one more proofread. I found quite a few grammatical errors and missing letters. At some points it just felt very childish too, the dialogues were just too cheesy, even if said by teenagers.

Overall I enjoyed the book and definitely recommend it if you are a Young Adult and into video games and that kind of fantasy.

Buy On: Amazon India | Amazon US

About the Author:

Adelle Yeung is the author of The Cycle of the Six Moons trilogy, a young adult fantasy adventure. She is also a voice-over artist who can’t go a day without a cup of tea. When she’s not writing or recording, she enjoys sewing costumes, baking sweets, and escaping on video game adventures.
She lives in California with a cat that dreams of eating the pet bird.

Author Links:
Website │ Goodreads │ Twitter │ Facebook

 

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