Clearing out my Kindle, Part 3
Lilly’s social life mainly revolves around band practice and her two sophomore band friends who she adopted as her band ‘children’. She takes her ‘children’ out for MacDonalds after most practices, and it is on a quick decision that she invites Charlie, the new kid, to join them. He has sat alone since he arrived at school, and she wants to make him feel included.
Charlie’s mission, unfortunately, involves him having to socialise with the Earthan teenagers, get to know them, join extracurricular clubs. Being musical, he decides to join the marching band, thinking it’ll be an easy way to meet the required criteria. But when the Earthan, Lillian, invites him to hang out, he finds himself on a path leading to friendship, and a much deeper understanding of the Earthans than he ever had before.
This is a novel filled with secrets. Charlie is always keeping something from someone. He is going to band because he likes it, not because he has to. He enjoys spending time with Lillian, not that his parents know of her existence. He is technically an alien – that’s probably the biggest secret he is trying to keep hidden. He leads a double life, pretending to be behaving so his parents leave him alone, and pretending to be a normal teenage boy, so Lillian will spend time with him. Even if he has to duck aside and look up the meaning of a word or term to keep his facade up, he seems determined to keep his secrets hidden.
Lilly has never been social, and yet, suddenly she not only has her band children, but she has another friend. But, Charlie is not a new band child, nor is he really a friend. He might dress strangely, and he may not be what others would consider handsome, but she wants to be more than friends with him. She knows that much for certain. Unfortunately, secrets have a tendency to reveal themselves, and, not that Lilly knew it, but their relationship was doomed from the start.
The idea of soulmates is presented in this novel, but in a strange way. On Charlie’s planet, they believe in the ‘One’, the person you are meant to marry and be with. Once you meet your One, that is it. But, finding the One can be difficult, especially if you’re not particularly interested in doing so. The difference I found, while reading this, is that usually, soulmates are depicted as a wonderful thing, that you may find your soulmate at any point in your life, and while you can’t decide who your soulmate will be, you have freedom around finding them. Finding the One is depicted as a very forced, urgent task. At eighteen, Charlie is already behind, as many marry several years before that if they have found their One. Finding his One is something Charlie is pressured into, something that he needs to do quickly, and it almost destroys the whole idea of soulmates. Charlie doesn’t necessarily want to meet his One, the amount of effort it takes is something he is expected to put into the task, not something he wants to do.
I found the pacing of this story a little strange. I would say that it moves quite slowly, but when I think about it, it doesn’t. At times, several days will go by in the span of a paragraph or two. The writing is laid out, at times, in a very factual way, telling what Charlie and Lilly are doing, without much about the details of anything. There is rarely a moment to pause, to get to know how the characters think, or feel, because the scenes move by so quickly, and I struggled to connect with the characters. I wanted them to have a happy ending, but I wasn’t entirely sure who they actually were.
This is not, in itself, a science fiction novel. It is a forbidden romance, set in the 1980s, and it just so happens that one of the characters comes from outer space. This is an easy book to read, and I definitely enjoyed the time period it was set in. It was refreshing to read a book where the characters weren’t glued to their phones, and the lack of more modern technology really showed itself in the second half of this novel, where things start to get more tense. I was a little disappointed with the ending, because the book is left on such a massive cliff-hanger, there is no way you can leave the story feeling satisfied if you are not planning on buying book 2.
I am a native Texan and have lived in the Houston area for most of my life. I am a wife and mom who loves to read. When I'm not kicking an idea around in my head for a story, I read and review books on Good Reads Occasionally, I sleep.
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