Book Review: All the Stars Left Behind by Ashley Graham

All the Stars Left Behind 

by Ashley Graham 

 

Published June 6th 2017 

by Entangled: Teen 

ARC For Review 

Summary


Relocating to Arctic Norway would put a freeze on anyone's social life. For Leda Lindgren, with her crutches and a chip on her shoulder the size of her former Manhattan home, the frozen tundra is just as boring as it sounds. Until she meets her uncle's gorgeous employee.

Unfortunately, no matter how smoking hot the guy is, Roar comes with secrets as unnerving as his moving tattoos. And Leda doesn't trust him.

Roar shouldn't be drawn to the moody human girl with eyes that leave him weak in the knees. But when Leda gets shot by one of his enemies and survives, Roar finally understands why he's drawn to her: Leda is exactly what he was sent to Earth to find. A weapon of immense power capable of saving his planet.

She just doesn't know it yet.

Family Bonds That Never Existed Can Still Hurt 

This synopsis and cover had me wanting to find out what was in store! Unfortunately, that is where the love ended. There was so much story to be told and the premise was unique. The characters were all very different and they had such promise this could have easily been a trilogy or at minimum 300 pages more. Everything felt choppy and somewhat contradicting there were two main characters and a plethora of secondary characters that should have been fleshed out fully and polished to create a cohesive captivating read from beginning to end. Sadly, this did not occur.

The Story, like I mentioned before was unique there are two races of people vying for dominance of the other. Yet, out of nowhere we find out the good guys have done some bad things themselves. Lena is brutally tortured...she gets away and absolutely nothing comes of the entire event. It felt unnecessary, it felt as though that sympathetic situation was too harsh. Then when nothing came of it that series of events felt empty. I am a fan of insta-love, but this story of love felt a bit lacking. The reader is told how the characters feel for one and other and that was okay, but I wish Roar and Lena had some more time to find out about each other and get to know who they are. It felt long, confusing, and not tied up.

The Characters, Roar is a super-hot alien but the reader isn’t brought into the workings of who he is and why it has to be him. We get a pretty cool name towards the end explaining a little bit of it but these are the things that make this story unique. It was hard to understand why these topics were not explored deeper. Lena suffers spinal bifida her character is all the stronger for it. The synopsis states she has a major chip on her shoulder and other than the obvious wrongs in her life she really doesn’t. Lena is a very smart gal with a big heart she has experienced a lot of loss but she is moving forward with her life. Until Roar, that’s when things start going haywire. I did enjoy her quite a bit. The several secondary characters of this story were a wonderful addition unfortunately the reader doesn’t get much deeper than a layer or two. Each beautiful character had so many of their own issues it would have been nice to see some resolution for them as well.

The End, Other than the MAJOR beautiful scene where Lena has her aha moment there wasn’t much there. A promise of a threat. The world still has several unresolved issues. The threat that Lena and Roar still faced…There was some nice setup for a picture it yourself kind of ending. Unfortunately, I don’t care for endings where you insert whatever you want to happen. Ha I want an epilogue…I want all t’s crossed and i’s dotted.

My Rating


2.5 Fun and different premise. Beautiful cover. Insta - Love and I don’t know why…But, fun filled stars, nonetheless.

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About the Author 

Ashley Graham was born in Ontario, Canada, and has since lived in five countries. Before writing her first manuscript in 2015, she worked as a clerical assistant, quality assurance officer, chef, and stay-at-home mom/homeschool teacher. When she isn’t writing or reading every book she gets her hands on, Ashley enjoys online window shopping, Netflix binges, and spends way too much time thinking about space travel. ALL THE STARS LEFT BEHIND is her debut novel.