Review: Good Series Opener
Rating: 3 out of 5
Date: 04 4, 2012
***NOTE MY REVIEWS OFTEN CONTAIN SPOILERS***Rhoe is a teenage male alien on the planet Retha who's lost his father to the other side, a place where no one ever comes back from, and hold on to his memory by desperately pursing their last experiment together a project called starjumping.  Rhoe is convinced that starjumping to the planet earth will give him what he needs to heel his dying brother and somehow bring his father back to him.  Ashley is the most popular girl at Beverly Hills High, but something's not right with her life.  Her best friend has become a frenemy, a person she no longer understands or trusts and nobody really knows anything about her but the image she presents to the world, an image that isn't really her.  When Ashley and Rhoe look into a telescope from different planets in different worlds but make the same wish something magical happens and they find themselves on different planets in different bodies.  Now Ashley must learn to be a teenage male alien in a world where she's a geek and she's got a crush on her male best friend while Rhoe has to figure out how to be the most popular girl in school while crushing on Ashley's female best friend.  And while they're figuring out how to be someone so totally unlike themselves, they also have to figure out how exactly to get home.  Will they find the answers they need before the dangers of being on planets they don't understand kills one of them or both?I debated a bit on rating for this between a three and four stars because I really did enjoy this story, however some of the issues I had for it just wouldn't let me give it a four stars.  First of all I found the enhanced version thing distracting with the links in the middle of the text.  I'll be honest in that I didn't click on them because I don't want to be pulled out of a story, but the color differences would kind of jerk my imagination out of the scene which I don't think is beneficial when you want to tell a story.  One of the issues I had with this book was the first person present tense from an alien point of view.  The present tense thing is just a personal preference thing, I don't like present tense writing, that's just me.  The first person thing in the beginning was in my opinion somewhat detrimental to the story.  It was bad enough in Ashley's Beverly Hills teenager point of view in the opening.  Apparently modern day Beverly Hills teenagers speak practically a different language because in the opening chapters I had to reread some things twice to understand what she was saying.  However the opening chapters from Rhoe's point of view, it didn't really matter how many times I reread it, I didn't get it until I saw Rhoe's word through Ashley's eyes.  The problem with a first person point of view in these scenes are there are certain basics in live you expect everyone to know that don't bear mentioning for example I don't need to tell you that humans need air to breath or that rain is wet.  Unfortunately in a alien's point of view it's the same deal, he doesn't need to explain what catchers are or that there's little gravity on his planet because it's expect that anyone he'd tell a story to would know that because they live there.  So the opening scenes on his planet were mostly me reading through pages thinking huh, over and over again.  We don't know the physical basics of his world, the laws of his reality and because he's telling it in a present tense kind of like we're in his mind he doesn't bother to explain these things that are basic to him.  I mean it might not have so much been a point of view issue if it was in the past tense and Rhoe the character knew he was telling his story to an Earthling such as Elliot's readers, but that isn't the case.  However after the body switch the first person worked wonderfully for giving us access to exactly what they're feeling which was kind of cool.  At the same time an outside perspective would have been nice too.  In a way I would kind of have rather seen this in a close third person for multiple reasons, one a  close third person still allows for thought processes but it offers more room for description and more point of view options.  Elliot would have had the opportunity to really describe Rhoe's world from the get go so that readers understood and picture the planet with its Dr. Seuss trees right from the first time we arrived on it.  Two that that point of view would have given us more than just Ashley and Rhoe's thoughts.  Like am I the only one that would have liked to been in Tiffany's or Yuke's mind?  It's not that I didn't like the story it's just that the point of view choice kind of limited the options in telling it and in the beginning caused some confusion.  Another thing that bothered me about this story is it felt rushed, the plot, the character reactions everything happened so fast and it was over in a heartbeat.  This also made some of the romantic interludes hard to believe.  I mean Rhoe doesn't even tell Tiffany he's not Ashley before he kisses her and she just sort shrugs it off and when he finally tells her she just accepts it.  Yuke may not have believed Ashley at first but shortly after he does believe her he's kissing her and trying to protect her like insta-love.  The story needed more bulk to it to build the world, slow down the relationships and make the connections between Rhoe and Tiffany and Yuke and Ashley come across as realistic.  These characters didn't just switch planets they switched sex and maintain a straight mentality when they did so.  Their counterparts are straight and people don't just start doing gay things overnight if they're not gay.  If I wound up switching bodies with a man, my husband would not instantly kiss me in a man's body.  Even with our previously established relationship it would take time for him to take that step because it's not in his nature, and he's not naturally attracted to men.  Without a previously established relationship that step would take even longer.  We'd have to journey through the slow process of falling in love before he'd do something that didn't feel natural to him.  I'm guessing the same could be said if the person was gay and his true love ended up in a body of the opposite sex.  It's not that  I don't think with the right amount of connection and feeling this hurdle could be crossed, it's that it takes time to establish that feeling and Elliot didn't provide enough of it to make this believable.  I liked the connection between the romantic characters, but I just think the story should have had more time to establish it.  With this science fiction romance Elliot is building a world as well as trying to recreate to stories of true love, which in my opinion, takes a lot more pages to establish than she's given us.  Do I think she could do it is she was willing to add the bulk? Definitely, what descriptions she offers us when we move further into the story are vivid, the tale is original and the idea is intriguing as well as gripping.  Most of the indie authors I take the time to read are because I've had some sort of interaction with the author, they asked me to read and review their work or we chatted in some group.  Granted I've found a lot of really great stories that way that I wouldn't have found otherwise, but I took the chance based on the writer, not based on the story.  It's likely I'd have never have come across the story on my own and some of those stories I would have sorely missed having not read.  Elliot had that talent just in her promoting and excepts to get my attention even when I was barely checking into the blogosphere.  I've never had any interaction with her, I just caught an excerpt and blurb about the book and it was one of those ideas I couldn't resist.  I bought the book as soon as I heard it had finally been released.  Judging from the amount of people on Goodreads with this story on their to read list I'd say I'm not the only one.  If she can garner that much attention from a blurb, excerpt and self promotion that's enough to show she's got talent.  Either that or really good connections, but after having read the story I'm leaning toward talent.  Her writing is at many points vivid and engrossing, there's just not enough bulk to the story for me to feel like it's been told as it should be.  Another thing I'd like to have had a little more bulk to is the explanation of how exactly Rhoe and Ashley switched bodies.  We get vague idea and explanations here and there, but it's not like anyone stops and say this happened because....  My final issue with the story is the ending, I mean it's a little open, and I was left saying that can't be it.  There's so many person relationships unresolved at the end of this story and questions unanswered, first in a series or not I'd like to have had more of a resolution than what we've been given.  But overall it was in fact a really good story that I really enjoyed reading.  It was quick, fast paced and highly original, there just needed to be more of it.The characters were well developed for the most part, obviously we got a really good sense of Rhoe and Ashley since we were looking at the world through their eyes.  While Ashley was a little on the perfect side for her world she did still have flaws like a drug and alcohol problem and a serious case of insecurity.  Rhoe had a lot more issues, but he had a lot of strengths too.  Elliot gave us a good sense of Yuke, Tiffany, Sean, Xanny and Rhoe's Mom.  I'm not sure if I'd say I felt like I totally knew them but we had a good sense of the individuality of each character.  The interpersonal relationships of the characters however left us very confused at the end.  For example Rhoe's not interested in guys but he likes the way it feels when Sean looks at Ashley with that I'll love you forever sort of look.  Ashley's not into girls but she ends up kissing Xanny and feels that connection between Xanny and Roe.  Yuke is I guess dating Xanny, but falls for Ashley who in return falls for him and then there's Tiffany and Rhoe falling for each other as well.  I'm just kind of confused how it's going to work out because it just can't be over.  How are Sean and Xanny going to fit, now it might be interesting to see them fit with each other, but considering the characters have no previous interaction I don't see how that's going to happen.  I'm hoping to see more of these characters and hopefully because it's a series I will, though that's not always the case with series sometimes they move on to new characters displacing the originals to background character and cameo appearances.  However I'm hoping that when we return to these character and their world that we'll be offered a chance to better know all of them, maybe a little more of the world from each of their points of view. Rhoe's parents have a lot of answers I'd like to have and all the teenager characters have such potential to be those kind of characters you relate to and feel like you know.Overall despite its issues listed above I'd definitely recommend this book.  Though rushed and a little confusing at the beginning it's a story worth reading and considering I don't normally like science fiction and tend not to read it that's saying something.  The characters and their plight make this so much more than science fiction and their story is definitely one worth traveling.