Great read.

An alien race, the Abdoloreans, hijacked Earth sixteen years ago, destroying all human life - except for Li who was adopted by one of the aliens, who has hidden her real identity as his daughter, raised her with his real daughter and spent her life training her how to blend and to survive. ( )

This was .... not great. Have I outgrown YA fiction?!??!

It is an interesting concept -- a human "passing" for alien on a conquered and vanquished Earth, but I just wasn't feeling it. The "alien" culture felt all too human (teenage angst and romance, adolescent tantrums, sisters "borrowing" their sister's clothes, dad being overprotective, etc.) and there was only passing references to the supposedly alien culture (brief reference to neck gills and an ability to breathe underwater, and relative strength and endurance which the main character struggles to maintain). I'm all about crazy alien world building (currently on a Sheri S. Tepper kick), and I wanted more of that.

I won this book through a giveaway. ( )

Humans did such a bad job taking care of the earth that when the Abdoloreans arrived they chose to wipe us out and start over to save the planet. Li was the only one saved and she is a dangerous secret.

See the rest on my blog: www.literarymatchmaker.blogspot.com ( )

Meh... What a great idea, Last girl on Earth trying to blend in with gill people who have repopulated the world...Yeah.. It could have been great, but it felt like I was reading the same chapter over and over. ( )

When Li was a baby, her adoptive father surgically gave her gills so that she could pass as an Abdolorean alien. When the Abdoloreans invaded Earth they wiped out all human life including Li’s birth parents. All her life he and her adoptive sister Zo have protected her secret and carefully crafted a life where she can fit in and continue living a relatively normal life as an alien girl. Enter Ryn, a boy who just moved to Earth from another Abdolorean run planet who finds Li intriguing. They enter a whirlwind romance that could put everything Li and her father worked for in danger of discovery.

There are a few reasons I didn’t like this book. For one, the world building was weak. This is purely a romance novel so it didn’t need that much setting exposition. But I would’ve like to have known how the aliens came into contact with Earth, in my haste to finish this book I may have missed that detail meaning it was probably too short for me to catch it. Second, Li wasn’t very interesting. She was a hard working student so that she could become an officer in the Abdolorean militia earning her some sort of merit so that they wouldn’t catch onto her real identity as human—something I didn’t quite understand either. But I never really became interested in Li as her own individual.

The biggest reason I wasn’t into this book was the romance. For a book that put everything aside to focus on the romantic side of these star-crossed lovers I didn’t get that cheesy grin when the guy and the girl are together being all googly eyed at each other. It was instant attraction at first sight and they both admit it to each other but from there I didn’t feel it. Longing stares and sweet nothings only get you so far with me.

Personally, it didn’t work for me as neither a romance or sci-fi novel but maybe someone else will like it. ( )