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.

©2024 Emily Hamilton (P)2024 HarperCollins Publishers

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.

ABSOLUTELY STELLAR!!!

Okay, this book was amazing. I thoroughly enjoyed reading and listening to it. How, though, did it take me until halfway through the book to realize it wad narrated by THE Vico Ortiz?!?! I kept thinking the narrator was doing an excellent job giving the characters their own voices and inflections... then realized it was my huge OFMD crush, Vico. Vico Ortiz did an EXCELLENT job here. They really brought life to this beautiful, imaginative, and romantic story.
I loved this book so much, the characters made me feel like I was part of their found family as well. The romance made me believe in true love again.
And that ending? So satisfying. I love a good happy ending.
5/5 stars for me. I look forward to reading more from this author!

Fantastic story!

very compelling story with a good narrator. I agree with another review that said this is much more science fantasy than science fiction. don't expect hard cote science just enjoy the great plot and characters. I found the characters to be very believable and liked that they are imperfect people who sometimes fight but they also TALK to each other. I hate books where the main conflict is because the characters just don't talk to each other. The plot was unexpected in some ways but so good and easy to listen to that it was easy to immerse myself in the story. I also like that this is not a dark book, yes there are situations where the characters are in peril and don't know how they're going to survive but they work together and support each other and I love the happy ending!

Solidly Okay

I went in expecting a lot more humor given how the book’s synopsis reads. But there’s really not much at all so the marketing isn’t exactly on point. The characters are mostly alright. They spend a large amount of time bickering at the start in a way that gets frustrating given their age and supposed advanced degrees. It often felt like they were teenagers in a YA world and not adults approaching their 30’s. The plot itself is engaging but there’s weirdly a lack of mystery to it given the (spoiler) powers the MC obtains.(end spoiler) The narration is decent. There’s passion behind it but the deeper voiced characters all have the same sounding voice which can make it difficult sometimes to discern who is talking without the he said/they said part. Solid okay read for me. Satisfied I read it once but probably won’t be something I ever revisit again.

Good idea, but hard to get through. Interrupted.

The idea of the storyline is great. It’s original… But just when you start to get back into the story there’s always always a scene that is so weirdly written that you can’t focus on the story. I really wanted to like it. For me, though, I just couldn’t. The character dialogue is shallow. Focusing too much on the overarching themes to the point where you never really get to know the characters.
As my personal opinion, it got needlessly graphic in a handful of scenes. I sort of caught myself cringing occasionally and skipped ahead to get it over with.