REVIEW: Aurora Rising – Amie Kaufman & Jay Kristoff (ARC)

Title: Aurora Rising (Aurora Rising #1)
Author: Amie Kaufman & Jay Kristoff
Rating: ★★★★½

ARC provided by the publisher through NetGalley.

I’m loving all the great sci-fi/space books coming out recently in the YA genre, and this was no exception. I will admit I was nervous going into this. Not only was there a tremendous amount of hype for this, but I’m pretty sure I’m the only person out there that did not like The Illuminae Files. Thankfully, Aurora Rising quickly squashed my worries and had me hooked from the first paragraph. 

“Um, excuse me.” Finian raises his hand, looking at Pixieboy. “But between me and Red over there, I think the squad already has its sarcasm quota filled.”

From the very beginning, this book was full of nonstop action. I mean, literally, from page one. The authors really killed it with those opening pages and it’s hard not to find yourself hooked from there. Amie and Jay did such a great job with the writing, to no one’s surprise. They’ve created an amazing ensemble of characters, each with their own distinct personalities. Having multiple POVs can be tricky, but I think they did a fantastic job making sure it would be easy to tell each character apart. My only issue was there were a couple of characters whose viewpoints I didn’t enjoy: Zila’s and Cat’s. I couldn’t connect with Zila because she was so quiet and only had a handful of pages written from her POV (because of her personality, I get it). And as for Cat, I’m sorry to say I just didn’t like her, which made me really not care too much about some of the events at the end of the book.

“Then again, I’m two hundred and thirty-seven years old myself. On a ship full of aliens. With whom I just robbed a space station. Nothing is impossible. But something is very, very wrong.”

Besides the action, the story was also full of excellent banter and just enough mystery to keep you on the edge of your seat. The entire time I was reading I couldn’t help but think this would make a really great movie. Aurora Rising was a fun, entertaining book perfect for fans of the YA sci-fi genre!