Stars Above Book Review

After the very much intense and fiery Fire-Breathing Bitch Queen that was Queen of Shadows, I needed some warm fluff. Warm fluff that I could read through the last days of Dutch winter and squeeze tightly to my chest while consuming hot chocolate. And I'd never read novellas before so why not?

Stars Above by Marissa Meyer

(ever noticed how many authors' surnames start with Ms or Rs?)

This isn't going to be an overly detailed review because it was just a collection of short stories. I overall very much enjoyed it, but not nearly as much as I did the original tLC stories. (This abbreviation causes confusion to all Dutch fans of this series because there's a TV channel called TLC here. I happen to frequently marathon its bridal dresses and cakes with my mom.)



This review contains spoilers for the non-novella books in the series. Beware.

My rating from best to 'worst':

1. Something Old, Something New: The crew is best together and despite the wedding not being as I expected, I loved it.
2. Carswell's Guide to Being Lucky: For some reason I really preferred this one to the others. It felt cute and almost like a contemporary.
3. The Princess and the Guard: Really explained a lot more of Winter's behavior, and I love Jacin and her together, having such a complex but lovely relationship.
4. The Little Android: A bit slow at first, but overall very beautiful and touching.
5. Glitches: I just like Cinder as a character a lot and I was in a great reading mood during this.
6. The Mechanic: Kai and his smothering cuteness. I was in a weird mood in this one, so that made me like it less. I also felt like it was a bit too long.
7. After Sunshine Passes By: Just not as gripping, probably because of the small timespan.
8. The Keeper: I don't know why I disliked this one.
9. The Queen's Army: Colors matter in a story, and this was just a bit too gray and a bit too monotone for me. It's not that I like Scarlet and Wolf least or anything, they just don't have such cute/intense backstories. (Haha, because BEING TURNED INTO A MONSTER is not intense.)

Reading so many short stories in a row and reviewing them now makes me realize how much my enjoyment really relies on my mood. Normally, I don't notice this because I'm not the kind of reader who has the ability to read a book in one sitting or just two days or so. I'm a very slow reader, so it generally takes me the entire day non-stop reading to get 200 pages done, which I hardly ever have time for. I'm also still in high school, so I have all kinds of studying and homework to do. (Except for this blissful couple of weeks between test week and two weeks April-May break, which create a test vacuüm during which I only have a handful of Dutch assignments and homework.) And even if I could read that fast, I'm kinda content with spending so much time on one book. It makes it feel like a journey AND lessens the effect of my mood swings on my reading enjoyment.

The rating of the complete book:
4,5 stars -ish. It did leave me with a lot of sentimental feelings towards this series and a desire to reread it.