Review Detail

What I Liked:
Going into Alienated, I was totally expecting something light and fluffy. For some reason, I decided that humor would be the main thing, followed by a cute romance. Actually, though, Alienated was a good deal more serious and dark than anticipated, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing. To a large degree, the central focus of Alienated is in fact xenophobia and a real consideration of the impact of the meeting of two such advanced cultures. Of course, there’s also some humor and quite a bit of romance too.

Generally, I’m not a huge fan of the aliens who just happen to be exactly like humans thing. What are the odds that life on two different planets will end up taking the same form? Still, I get why authors go for that, and I like that Landers put forth a theory for why that might be the case in the form of a myth. The theory’s probably not good for much really, but it says to me that Landers put a LOT of thought into Alienated‘s world building.

Landers’ world building really is quite good. She gets down into a lot of details and creates a culture in the L’eihr that is really quite distinct. Though much like humans in basic form, the L’eihr are undoubtedly alien. They can communicate telepathically and are much more intelligent than humans. Thankfully, they’re almost entirely non-violent or humanity would be toast.

Perhaps, though, humanity deserves to be incinerated. It sort of feels like all of humanity welcomes the L’eihr like the Westboro Baptist Church would welcome the gay pride parade. Essentially, I found the reactions utterly sickening. At the same time, it did feel believable; I do not see humanity taking it particularly well should it be discovered that there is intelligent life out there and it’s outclassed us in every way. I do like the smaller details quite a bit, like the way religious belief was affected by the arrival of the L’eihr and things like that.

For the most part, I’m a big fan of the romance. There’s just something about the emotionless Vulcan L’eihr experiencing feelings that really gets me. Plus, Melissa Landers writes some good kissing and snuggling scenes. Also, the scene where Cara and Aelyx first get together? Pretty much the most hilarious thing ever. I do have one reservation here, though: the romantic feelings seemed to appear out of nowhere. The two do, I think, have a believable connection, but it went from Aelyx not thinking of her that way to him suddenly giving her an incredibly cheesy nickname out of the blue. Dear YA, I do not like cutesy nicknames. Couple nicknames are only adorable if they’re a bit insulting or entirely ridiculous. Though I’m mostly on the spaceship, I wouldn’t mind if it crashed either, to be honest. Either way is cool.

What Left Me Wanting More:
One aspect of the book really grated on me, however: Cara’s relationship with her best friend, Tori. Cara’s boyfriend Eric is also problematic, but Tori is more so. Initially, I loved Tori. She’s a tiny, Hispanic dynamo who swears at everyone in Spanish. But then she proves to be an absolutely horrible friend to Cara, turning jealous and selfish and vain. There are not enough POC characters in fiction that I’m okay with this happening. And, of course, through it all, Cara’s more forgiving than she should be, because she’s such a wonderful person. It seemed like Tori and Cara had a real friendship, and I didn’t get what Tori’s motivations were. Was she always that shallow? Did something happen? I don’t know, but I do not like what was done with that character one iota.

The cover: Whitewashing is not cool. Ever.

The Final Verdict:
Overall, I’m pretty impressed with Melissa Lander’s Alienated, and I will most definitely be reading the second book in the series. Landers’ mixture of light-hearted humor and darker themes worked quite well. I hope to see a bit more consistency and motivation in the characterization, and for a continuation of the delightful world building.