Review: Go, read something else!
Rating: 1 out of 5
Date: 08 27, 2013
Note: A free copy was provided by the author in exchange for an honest review.Four words.This book was awful.Seven words.This book was a major info dump.Three sentences.Page 1 to 160ish- Long-winded description of Space Station Hope and thoughts about Balik.Page 161ish to 300ish- The plane or the spaceship finally took off.Page 301ish to 389 (end)- Back to square one. Instead of the lengthy description of SS Hope, there was little bit of action, more romance and intolerable info dump.Want the long version? Okay. Fine.  Don't say I didn't warn you.So, I really thought that I was doing myself a favor when I put in a request for this book.  It turned out that I actually requested a torture device. >,< Even at the beginning of the story, I was already miserable.  It wasn't only turtle paced but a cramped bag of information.  And the thing that annoyed me the most during that part was Cassie's exam.The story started with the heroine taking an exam where she needs to answer an essay question.  Guess what? The answer consisted of 4200 characters, 745 words, and 9 paragraphs contained in 4 pages.  And I had to read all that boring stuff like it would save the world from Armageddon.And don't get me started on the characters.  For my sanity's sake, let's exclude the best friends, acquaintances and the parents because they're like mushrooms; underdeveloped and only appear after lightning strikes.  Let us focus our attention to the two leads.  Cassie is horrible with no self-confidence (but she is smart and it was mentioned that she's been acing a lot of her subjects) and for some reason, loves to pull a Bella Swan stunt (i.e. I would never be beautiful as her, Balik would never notice my plain and simple beauty if I ever have one).  Around 50% of the book was solely focused on her thoughts whether Balik likes her or not.  On the other hand, Balik was okay. He's a nerd but he's also gorgeous in a way.  I like the workings of his mind and his logical way of seeing things. I would have loved him if not for that very tiny part where he snuck into Cassie's room to watch her while she slept.  That was a trip down memory lane.  At least there was no oil or I would uttered, "Edward Cullen, is that you?"My last bit of hope was finally dowsed when it came clear to me that romance was the main point of this book.  It overpowered everything else.  There were a lot of times that I was tempted to shake the whole book to put some sense into it.  As the story progressed, it deviated from the path that it should take.  It was no wonder that I've sighed a lot while reading it.Even the world building sucked. There was a lot of telling instead of showing. Cassie's and Balik's world failed to absorb me.  And because of this, I want to forget my dream about signing up for that one-way trip to Mars.The action scenes were mediocre and were haphazardly inserted near the end of the book.  By that time, I've lost all sense of caring. I didn't care anymore if my questions were answered during the last part.  All I wanted is to be done with reading especially that the author provided the answers without any subtleties. It was rushed and another info dump.Hope's daughter felt more like a scientific paper to me than a fictional story.  Everything seemed off that I can't help but sense that this book existed to troll me.