Chasing Stars by Alex K. Thorne

Chasing Stars by Alex K. Thorne

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


*I received this book from Ylva Publishing for an honest review*

This is one of those books that is tricky for me – in that I found it both intriguing and vaguely hard to get into in the beginning, and yet, despite that ‘hard to get into’, I read 62% of the book in basically one go – and only stopped because I slumped over asleep. I mean, it was 3 am at that point.

So – this book is the third in Ylva’s stand-alone Superhero books. For various reasons I have not yet read the other two books so cannot make any comment beyond what I just stated.

I do not mean to have a series of short paragraphs but . . . I do. One of the reasons I was first lured to this book was because I happened to notice that the author was from South Africa and I’d, as far as I know, had never read a lesbian fiction book from there, set there, or otherwise connected to there. This book, though, is set in California. One of the main characters is an alien to the country, though. Alien as in literally from outer space. Well, no, that might imply something one way or another. An alien from another planet who arrived to Earth in a spaceship that had crash landed on Earth roughly . . . . 17 years prior to the start of this book. I know it was 17 years prior because the lead and solo point of view was ten when the ship crashed and is 27 now.

Ava Eisenberg has two jobs – she works as the personal assistant to a high-flying Hollywood elite actress, Gwen Knight, and she also works as Swiftwing, superhero. Like, say, Supergirl, Ava’s personality changes when she has the mask on or off. Confident, in control, powerful with mask on. Not confident, stuttering, occasionally clumsy without mask on (okay, she wobbled once in her shoes, I’m not actually sure if clumsy works here or not). And like Supergirl, Ava’s boss knows both Ava and Swiftwing – separately (referring here to the Cat Grant/Supergirl dynamic, not whoever Supergirl’s boss is at the moment on the tv show).

That boss, as noted, is Gwen Knight. Highly successful, bitchy, ice-queen like Hollywood actress of 44. Who has a young adopted son named Luke. Which is important to the story line since it’s the reason certain things unfolded. Like, say, the part where Gwen’s ex-husband has now, after years not doing so, is fighting for full custody of Luke. Because he’s, the ex-husband Alfonso, is in a stable relationship, while Gwen is not. Which is how Ava and Gwen ended up in a fake relationship to show stability or whatever it was they were trying to show.
This was a rather neat, much more interesting, deeper, more exciting book than I had expected (or thought it would be after the opening parts). And has a lot more characters of importance and story-lines than I’ve mentioned – I can’t mention everything here.

Oh, and yes, there’s a tiny bit of graphic sex embedded in the book. At least one scene (if I recall correctly, just one scene – if that kind of thing matters to review readers).

And, since I haven’t expressly mentioned it before now, there is in fact a bunch of superhero stuff that occurs in this book. Actual flying around, doing superhero type stuff.

Rating: 4.78

February 28 2018




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