Or; Til Piggybacks On Sera’s review of Stars, Hide Your Fires by Jessica Mary Best
My plan for this month was to review Stars, Hide Your Fires by Jessica Mary Best, a Cinderella story set in space where Cinderella is a pickpocket using the ball as cover to rob from the rich and give to the people who want to get the hell off this gods-forsaken moon. Everything goes pear-shaped over a murder, and suddenly Cass needs to clear her name if she wants to survive.
Then I read Sera’s review and agreed with nearly everything. The exception is the bit where Sera mentions being a regular reader of adult novels; I’m definitely more a YA reader. Besides that, I think Sera’s nailed it: interesting worldbuilding about the abuses of space-capitalism with a stuttering plot and stilted romance between flat characters.
What I hope to add is my suspicion as to why.
This book is solidly okay. It’s fun if one tempers one’s expectations; I enjoyed the external gender markers, awkward fake-dating moments, and the lengthy scene in which Cass is completely fooled for several minutes by who I already knew to be the killer. Though the setup is Cinderella and the plot is definitely not, I appreciated the wink-to-the-audience moments, like Cass losing a shoe.
I suspect this was intended as a duology. An explosive rescue around the two-thirds mark was likely meant as the end to book one, which explains the extremely rushed piece set among the rebel Voyria sect—the found family as was-not-quite. The book so clearly wanted to be more than it was, had more to say than it was able to. It’s lighthearted fun… in a murder mystery… amid the exploitation of a capitalist society that literally sees people as resources. Though not all of the side characters stayed with me, I saw the effort Best put into them. To me, the book makes much more sense as a duology forced into a standalone format by a debut author whose publisher wasn’t willing to risk a duology on an unknown.
And that’s a damn shame. Debut authors get bigger contracts for having a large TikTok following than Best has for her talent. She is talented. The world is interesting, layered, cruel. Cass is out of her depth and makes some big mistakes—I would have liked to see bigger ones, but the limited space didn’t allow for them. The clear markers of could-have-beens will keep me reading. Her newest novel is a sapphic, dystopian, soulmates-gone-wrong offering and I hope to review it here… well, one of these months!
Stars, Hide Your Fires doesn’t deliver all it could. (For that, try Crownchasers by Rebecca Coffindaffer.) Still, it’s a solid okay from a promising writer. I recommend the book with hesitation and caveats—if you want a silly sci-fi adventure, if you remember to keep it light. The author, though? I think she’s one to watch.
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