The Stars Too Fondly

A Novel

By: Emily Hamilton

Narrated by: Vico Ortiz

In her breathtaking debut—part space odyssey, part sapphic rom-com—Emily Hamilton weaves a suspenseful, charming, and irresistibly joyous tale of fierce friendship, improbable love, and wonder as vast as the universe itself.

So, here’s the thing: Cleo and her friends really, truly didn’t mean to steal this spaceship.

They just wanted to know why, twenty years ago, the entire Providence crew vanished without a trace. But then the stupid dark matter engine started all on its own, and now these four twenty-somethings are en route to Proxima Centauri, unable to turn around, and being harangued by a snarky hologram that has the face and attitude of the ship’s missing captain, Billie.

Cleo has dreamt of being an astronaut all her life, and Earth is kind of a lost cause at this point, so this should be one of those blessings in disguise that people talk about. But as the ship gets deeper into space, the laws of physics start twisting, old mysteries come crawling back to life, and Cleo’s initially combative relationship with Billie turns into something deeper and more desperate than either woman was prepared for.

Lying somewhere in the subspace between science fantasy and sapphic rom-com, The Stars Too Fondly is a soaring near-future adventure about dark matter and alternate dimensions, leaving home and finding family, and the galaxy-saving power of letting yourself love and be loved.

An amazing surprise!

I grabbed this not expecting a lot. The description was interesting. Holy crap! This story was amazing. I don’t want to give a lot away, but the characters really suck you in. That’s what gets you at first in this book. This special group of found family with delightfully diverse personalities. Every friend group has that one friend that gets all of them in trouble and drags them on the most amazing stories. That’s the core of this story. The adventure that these friends embark on is just complicated enough to keep the story moving fluidly. The science fiction elements are light, believable, and not too into the weeds. But, the growing love story of the two main characters made it so I couldn’t put this book down. The hesitancy of the love is not the on again off again stuff of typical romcoms, but it’s that hesitancy of what’s the definition of love. I imagine this love story with the sci-fi setting would make Gene Roddenberry smile.

a wonderful surprise

I was surprised by how much I enjoyed this! Everything was layed out very fluently and it was all easy to follow along and understand. I wasn't expecting such a strong 'found family' aspect when I started this but was pleasantly surprised to have it as it's one of my favorite sub-generes to any story.

omg so good.

this was an amazing story. it's been a long time since I felt love of all kinds so clearly. Definitely will listen again. so good

The Best Sapphic Story To date.

The only complaint that I have is that the author has only this one beautiful title to her name thus far. The Science Fiction tends more towards what I would classify as "Science Fantasy", but that's honestly more of a semantic difference. The story starts out with a fantastic premise, and throughout the story you get to know each of the cute characters, and none of them feel like they were "well I need out the LGBTQIA+ Roster ... I'll just throw them in here...", The limited cast helps to honestly build up specificity and helps make the reader truly feel involved in every moment and feel like they want to see what they do, how they go about their lives and what they like, dislike, etc. The author does play to the reader expectation, setting out "here's some ideas for who the Big bad is" "Here's what happened to them" and ending with "oh yeah no, if you didn't figure it out by the end of the story? Well it becomes very obvious, but if you figured it out before? You get to feel clever!" The romance and building of the two intimate romantic plots is fantastic, it never feels forced, it never feels like it's rushed, it feels like "oh I'm watching these friends go from just adorable friends, and build up to something more" save for the "pre-existing relationship" which was handled just as expertly of two people who seemed to be not quite "head over heels" but definitely in that "I'm comfortable with my partner and I love them." The friendships were also beautiful to see and I definitely want to see more of the characters, or even just "here's some more fun fantasy stuff that's set up in the world, let's see other characters." There was an interesting vocal quirk with Vico Ortiz about the word Montage, it didn't pull me out of the story and in fact I found it kind of endearing to hear the vocal quirk. End of the day if you're looking for a definitely Sapphic story, with a lot of the LGBTQIA+ spectrum involved, Hands down. I cannot recommend this any more highly, I hope that Emily Hamilton Makes many more delightful books, and makes more stuff, because if this is any sense of what they can provide, it makes me if nobody else, highly curious and want to see more.

Loved it!

The characters are fun and well-written. The reader presented individual characters you can believe in.