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“The Stars Too Fondly” is a blend of comic space adventure mixed with a sapphic love story. With threads of friendship, family, love, loss, mystery, and a surprisingly poignant commentary on scientific progress and just how much one is willing to sacrifice to serve their own ends.

Cleo and her friends grew up on an Earth mired in decline. Their hopes of a better future were pinned on a daring space mission to Proxima Centauri B and a wonder engine field by dark matter. But things don’t turn out as expected (the crew vanishes on launch day), and Cleo, Kaleisha, Abe, and Rod end up “accidentally” hijacking the abandoned spaceship and get wrapped up in the mystery of why they were able to get it to fly, and just where all of the previous crew actually went when they disappeared all those years before. To help them, Cleo and the group turn to Billie, the holographic representation of the AI that the “real” Captain Billie Lucas left behind. The only problem is, Cleo and Billie seem an awful lot like they are falling in love, while the truth behind what happened before and what is happening to the friends now, slowly comes to light.

There was humor here, and deep love threaded in between the science fiction space story of survival. Told in interwoven snippets of ship communication logs, current events, and what appears to be some sort of observer, these overlapping elements keep the pace fresh and moving. Cleo, Ros, Kaleisha, and Abe are all well-drawn characters and even hologram Billie makes a mark very quickly. Billie and Cleo together are a joy to read and also make your heart ache for them and the seemingly insurmountable odds of falling in love with someone who is no longer a tangible person, but certainly feels like one.

Emotions run high as the stakes unfold. What starts as a simple misadventure quickly turns into a philosophical exploration of love, progress, and sacrifice. For not only Cleo and her friends but Billie and the previous crew of the ship. This was at turns fun and heartwarming and tense and managed to weave all of its’ story threads together well through to the end.

*Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for the ARC. All opinions are my own. Publication date is June 11, 2024.