This is a book that made me feel in unexpected ways. Unexpected since the two main characters are: a sixteen-year-old girl and… an alien. But all the feels I did indeed have.
At its core, it was a book about love. Not romantic love, just love. About loving someone even though you know they are only going to be in your life a short time, loving them deeply even though they are somehow very different from you, loving in a way you never expected. And it was about realizing that love exists, even when you don’t always see it.
It’s interesting because just as much as the book is about love, it’s about hate, too. It’s about the human tendency to destroy that which is different, whether in the name of science or anything else.
But there were other messages, too, including that of sexual harrassment. That was especially relatable with all the discussions these days about unwanted sexual attention, about microagression.
It truly was a bizarre book, all of these messages set in the Alaskan wilderness, and in a sci-fi/survival story, young adult plot. It was just so well done, and there really aren’t words to describe the experience of reading it.
But I loved every single page!