An immersive and engaging read that drags you in. I enjoyed the romance and the world building. Anne Corlett's writing keeps you wanting to read on.

Ok, so I like scifi and also an occasional bit of chick lit. So this worked for me! A bit of a crossover between genres, so some readers may be put off. I thought the main character was a bit introspective and whiny, but not so much I didn't care what happened to her. It was a bit weird going from another planet to Northumbria, but the end was definitely interesting. I happily received a review copy.

Every now and then a book comes along that confirms to you that it's not that you're struggling to get excited about reading. It's just that the books you've been reading recently, while perfectly competently written, have just been a bit meh. Anne Corlett's The Space Between The Stars (review copy from Pan Macmillan) is one of those astonishing, game-changing books that reminds you what reading should be about.

Corlett's novel is the story of a universe after a highly contagious virus has wiped out most of humanity. A tiny number of survivors - each of them one in a million - are scattered across colony worlds across the universe. They must deal with what has happened and find a way of moving forward. The story focuses on Jamie Allenby, who had fled to a remote outpost from the breakdown of her relationshp following a miscarriage. She wakes alone after the virus has burned itself out, and sets out on a journey home to the Northumberland coast. Along the way she meets a failed priest, a religoius scientist, a ship's captain and his gruff engineer, a prostitute and a boy with autism. These become her unlikely travelling companions on her journey to Earth and a hoped-for reconciliation with her partner Daniel - if he has survived the virus.

So far so Station Eleven. But what sets The Space Between The Stars apart is its focus on the personal. The small stories of the survivors and how they deal with the consequences of what has happened: grief and anger are real and there are no easy ways forward. Let me be clear: this is not a big, galaxy spanning story of rebuilding civilisation or a Survivors-style tale of people banding together for protection against feral raiders in the ruins of our world. Civilisation has ended with a whimper rather than a bang.

This is a story about humanity in all its chaotic glory. Don't expect the relentlessly saccharine positivity of The Long Way To A Small Angry Planet. And that makes it a much better piece. This is a book about how imperfectly we live together with one another. It's about the tension between our striving for privacy and independence, and our basic need for community and contact with one another. It's about the imperfect communications between us all. It's about the messy business of life and survival, and the way it does not fit neatly into the stories we tell one another, with their clarity of purpose and happy ever after endings. Like the sea glass that Jamie collects on the beach, we are all unique: shaped and made beautiful by the pounding tides that rub us up against one another and the grit between us.

Goodreads rating: 5*

I received a copy of this from Netgalley to review based just on the “ragtag group of survivors” because I love books centered around that and I certainly wasn’t disappointed. I started reading this book before going to bed, and I didn’t put it down until I’d finished it because I was enjoying it so much!

The plot follows Jamie and the group of survivors she ends up with that include a former priest, a prostitute, the captain of a ship and an autistic boy. Along their travels they meet other groups of survivors until they eventually reach their final destination.

Obviously, in a book like this, the main focus is going to be on the characterisation and the interactions between the characters. They were all fantastic and I really enjoyed the tensions between them at times. However, the character I’m going to focus on for this review is Finn. Finn is an autistic boy and I adore him. He is written very well and at no point is he ever treated as a joke, most of the characters accept him the way he is (one doesn’t, but she’s not happy with most of the survivors). I was just so happy to see a positive representation, and see how the crew were just so accepting. At one point, Jamie gets very upset because he’s wandered off without telling her but she doesn’t yell or shout at him and the captain just calmly goes “Hey, tell us next time okay?”. Another survivor that we meet briefly is also very likely to be Aromantic and Asexual based on the conversation she had with Jamie and again, she was portrayed in a positive manner, perfectly happy the way she was and the situation she was in. These positive representations just made me love the novel even more and just made me feel so happy to read.

The worldbuilding is something that we don’t see much of, because it’s focusing mostly on the characters. We get a small glimpse at the history that involves forced emigration from Earth based on social classes and we see a couple different planets. What we do see is certainly very interesting and because of the nature of the book, it’s something that isn’t as important. One thing the book doesn’t address is how they travel through space, other than a mention of needing fuel, but as it’s a very character-based novel this lack of information isn’t that important as it doesn’t relate to the plot.

I don’t want to say too much more, because part of the enjoyment was just being along for the journey and so it’s best to go in knowing as little as possible.

I would highly, highly recommend this novel as I was just so charmed by it and any book that keeps me up until 3am reading deserves to be recommended! I enjoyed this book so much I’m planning on buying a physical copy when it comes out so I can force my friends to read it.

This is a character study more than a plot-stuffed SF piece focusing on spaceships and so forth. Sure, there are in fact spaceships, but they could just as easily be trains travelling across the country,

Jamie is living on a barely populated planet when a deadly virus hits the universe. Men and women die in their billions. It's spread by touch, so only the lonely and isolated survive. Fresh from a breakup, Jamie is one such lonely person.

Among a handful of survivors on their planet, she is picked up by an approaching ship, by the reluctant hero Callan.

Jamie thinks her ex may have survived too, as unlikely as that is, and wonders if this is a sign that they never should've broken up. She is driven to find him, just as she is driven to go over and over all the problems in their relationship.

This is what powers the story, as they bump from planet to planet, as they figure out what life might mean after the disease.

The plot itself was fairly obvious and certainly not as full of world-building as you might expect from a solid SF novel (which I do like reading very much), but I enjoyed the writing and found myself swept up in its contemplative nature.

The Space Between the Stars won't be for everyone, but it was for me.

Even though this book is set in space, and it is classified as a sci-fi novel, this doesn't feel like one at all. A fact that I, to begin with, found disappointing. So do not pick up this book expecting a full on space adventure, but do pick it up to experience an surprisingly philosophical book about trying to find meaning and understanding in a large and vast universe.

Even though I found the book at times to be cliché and a bit repetitive, I felt strongly for Jamie and her inner struggles. She was easy to relate to and I both loved and resented her in a weird way.

The not so unexpected love story that emerged was lovely and although the pacing of this book was off at times and the nerve kept coming and going, it was an enjoyable read.

I thoroughly enjoyed this interstellar road trip. Some of the planets were so creepy (the one with the hiding man!) and it really captures the essence of human nature, across time and space and disaster and joy. For fans of Firefly and Station Eleven.

Jamie survives a virus that’s wiped out most of humanity. She’s on a planet far from home, and far from Daniel – the man she once loved. Together with the handful of other survivors she finds, Jamie sets out on the long journey across the stars back to Earth. If you’re not a sci-fi fan, don’t let that put you off. The Space Between the Stars is much more about human relationships and fragile societies than it is about space ships. This has summer bestseller written all over it.

Like many books this one starts with the end of the world. A virus has wiped out an eye-wateringly large percentage of the human population – a fever, spread by almost any kind of human contact, which last for three days. At the end you either recover or turn to a surprisingly small pile of dust. On a small and isolated planet we meet a small group of survivors – a vet, a preacher, an older woman who believes that God is trying to cleanse the world, a prostitute and a young man on the autism spectrum. They are rescued by a small space ship (manned by a slightly Han Solo-ish captain and his engineer who reminded me a bit of Tasha Yar) and head off to the system capital. The group travel on, eventually, until they reach Earth – and more specifically the Northumbrian coast near to Lindisfarne.

This isn’t really a book about the science of sci-fi. The virus, its transmission and effects (including the fact that it seems to render survivors infertile) are explained well but the bulk of the book is about humans: their emotions, passions and fears. This is a story about the gaps in people – their emotional voids, the people missing from their lives and, in some cases, the gaping holes where their moral compass should be. Some sci-fi readers won’t like this but others – fans of Becky Chambers, Connie Willis’s Doomsday Book or P.D. James’ Children of Men perhaps – will relish it. Science-fiction isn’t all about rockets and ray guns – psychology is a science too, after all…

The Space Between The Stars is – for me, at least – this year’s Station Eleven. It spoke straight to my heart and unstrung it. Even more so than Station Eleven, this is a post-apocalypse that acknowledges the tropes and then rejects them. It acknowledges and embraces that life is messy and people are complicated. It upholds what it claims to believe in, however awkward, rather than sacrificing its ideals on the altar of necessity. Consequently, I find The Space Between The Stars both hopeful and incredibly satisfying. And in spite of being a grumpy sentimentalist who claims to hate romance, I'm not ashamed to admit I was shipping madly from the start.

https://lynns-books.com/2017/06/01/the-space-between-the-stars-by-anne-corlett/
The Space Between the Stars is a story concerning one woman’s journey, not just across the stars from A to B but also a search to find herself. As debut novels go I think this is very good. I wouldn’t say it contains much sci fi to be honest and it’s not particularly a story packed with action, it’s more a character study set against a rather grand back drop.

As the story starts we make the acquaintance of Jamie Allenby as she awakens from illness to find herself quite alone. Jamie lived on a pretty remote planet in the colonised universe but even though there weren’t many people there were some, on this particular day though it seems that the virus sweeping from planet to planet has turned everyone to dust. Jamie heads to the nearest port looking for survivors and just as she begins to despair she meets with a couple of characters and before long they find themselves on a ship desperately trying to return to Earth.

I liked The Space Between the Stars, it’s well written and quite thought provoking. However, before I say anything further I will point out that this is very low in terms of sci fi – in fact strictly speaking Jamie could have been travelling from one end of any country on earth to another with much the same outcome as travelling from one planet to another by spaceship. There are no aliens, no light travel, no warp speed and actually not too much by way of explanation. The universe aspect is simply the backdrop. This also isn’t a story that races away in terms of plot. Yes, of course, being an apocalypse style book there are a number of encounters but to be honest these felt a little formulaic, perhaps not if you don’t read too many books in this style but otherwise this isn’t really reinventing the wheel.

Now, I don’t really mean to sound negative with any of the above I’m simply making the point because I think it helps in terms of expectations going into a book. I got on quite well with this book, I enjoyed it, it has a mystery aspect and a little romance, although this does not dominate the plot, but, there are other elements that are skimpy. Basically, I have slightly torn feelings. In one respect, I liked this and didn’t struggle to finish it but on the other hand I had these niggles, some storylines felt very easily resolved, there was some incredibly good luck happening on a fairly frequent basis and travelling between the planets seemed incredibly quick, but, I quickly came to realise this was a certain type of read and with that in mind, once I stopped expecting an alien attack or a hoard of zombies it wasn’t a struggle any more. So, if you want something more from this than one woman, feeling very alone, embarking on a journey and having some revelations along the way then this might not be the story for you.

In terms of characters. Well, we have Jamie, and this is very much the Jamie show. Jamie has experienced certain things in her life that have led her to run to the furthest corner of the known universe where she would have the freedom to live and work without having to interact too often with other humans. She’s tetchy and I suppose she comes across as a little self centred. She certainly spends a lot of her time thinking through why her prior relationship didn’t work and mulling things over rather than maybe considering how she would survive. However, I guess she’s simply built a wall around herself to protect others from getting through and emotionally hurting her. In times of crisis though she finds she wants to return home – at first for an ideal that she holds in her mind but as the story progresses I think simply to go home – may it ever be so humble, etc. Along the way she finds her hard exterior cracking and eventually she begins to let others get beneath her skin.

On the whole, I think this is an enjoyable read. I had certain issues that prevented it being a great read but nonetheless a positive debut and I would definitely be interested in reading more work by this author.

I received a copy through Netgalley, courtesy of the publishers, for which my thanks. The above is my own opinion.

This novel follows Jamie, who awakens to find that she has survived a deadly plague that has ripped through Earth, and the other planets that humans have colonised. She discovers other survivors, and together they try to make their way to Earth, which they have chosen as some sort of 'safe haven' to begin again.
This novel really wasn't what I was expecting, the blurb suggested a dystopian style novel with end of the world style action, with rebuilding and re-inhabiting of the decimated Earth, and other planets. Instead, there is very little action in this novel, the characters travel through space a lot, but other than this interstellar travel the action is minimal. The majority of the narrative is filled with Jamie's philosophical wonderings on the purpose and meaning of life and the existence of God among other 'big topics'. I'm not sure how I feel about this, some elements of the narrative were quite interesting, and did encourage me to think about how it would be to be one of the last human survivors on a planet. But at the same time it sometimes felt too much. It felt too preachy and it got exhausting to read her constant meandering thoughts.
The above mentioned lack of action made the novel a little slow going, but it did mean that when periods of action took place, I appreciated the change of pace more. In actual fact, the action scenes that Corlett wrote were well done, especially when considered that the novel is written from a first persons P.O.V.
The novel is written completely from Jamie's point of view, and I must admit that I tend to find the 1st person narrative difficult to read if the character isn't intriguing enough. This was the problem I had in this novel, Jamie is not an interesting enough character to warrant my enthusiasm to continue the novel, and I really had to drag myself through it at times. She's a particularly negative person, and she whines for approximately 80% of her narration, which is exhausting to read constantly!! She is also constantly suspicious and thinks the worst of everyone she meets, making the novel quite a dark and moody read, with very little happiness or positivity to lighten it. I can understand that experiencing most of humanity being wiped out by a plague would be a pretty negative experience, but the narrator didn't seem able to think positively about anything, and for me personally this made the novel slow and difficult to get through, and certainly reduced my enjoyment of it.
This novel is set in a fascinating world, with humans inhabiting other planets, and space travel is a totally normal thing. I would've liked more background information about the world; things like how the Government ruled and number of planets inhabited would have been interesting to read about, but obviously I realise that that was not the purpose of the novel.
One element of this novel that I really enjoyed was the romantic element that ran through it. This was well created by Corlett, it had enough back story to make it believable, and the foundations for their relationship were built gradually but felt stable and realistic throughout. I was really glad these two characters got together, and the whole atmosphere of the book was definitely lightened by the romance.
Overall I gave this novel 3.5/5 stars. I thought it was an interesting take on science fiction and the end of the world narratives, and placing the focus on the human side of it, and how a human would psychologically cope was an interesting take. However, I felt that the whiny narrator paired with a fairly slow meandering narration did not hook me the way I was hoping it would.

Yes, this is a post-apocalyptic novel following the adventures of one of the few survivors after a terrible virus burns through humanity. But it’s a lot more grown-up than just charting the gritted determination of Jamie to survive in a world where everything has been so very changed. It’s a book that examines what she was expecting from life and the world – and what happens to her when those expectations are smashed after she experiences a tragedy far more common than the end of the world – a miscarriage.

Written in third person, this book gets right under the skin of the main character, warts and all. I didn’t like her very much – she is often quiet when she should say something and is awkward around humans. While she initially trained as a doctor, she moved sideways and qualified as a vet because she was a loss to know what to say or do when people, scared and ill, would proffer intimate details of their life to her. When she meets up with other survivors, she is clearly socially inept. During an argument on board a ship in cramped conditions, she flares at one of the other passengers, who is clearly suffering with her own mental problems – to the extent that I wanted to slap her just to shut her up.

Did I care for her, though? Oh yes. Corlett has written a character who doesn’t feel she fits anywhere. Who wants to reach out to the only man she thinks she’ll ever love – but can’t deal with the crowding that brings. Or his own demand for her to open up and release her sense of grief for their lost baby – something she simply cannot do. By the end of the book, we get to understand exactly why Jamie is as she is, while she undertakes a long journey, both literally and also emotionally with a small group of survivors, who are also shattered at the profound loss they have endured.

What this isn’t, is a completely bleak read. There are times when the situation lurches into farce, for instance when they encounter a group of elderly folk living in a stately home acting as if they are in the middle of a Jane Austen novel. And there is some nicely edged banter with the grumpy space pilot, who is clearly more comfortable carrying crates of freight than the group of traumatised passengers he ends up ferrying.

Corlett brings this tale to a satisfactory conclusion, including solving the mystery of what caused the virus in the first place. I closed the book, musing on the Jamie’s journey – and wondering if I was left standing with everyone I cared about gone, what I’d do next. This is one I shall be thinking about for a while, I suspect. If you enjoy unusual books that raise hard, pertinent questions about why we are here and what we are doing, then track this one down.
9/10

Gosh not sure what to say about this book.I thought the idea was very promising , I was looking forward to reading this book as the idea of combining a Dystopian end of the world scenario with Sci - Fi was bound to be a hit with me as I enjoy both genres but it wasn't a hit.I found the characters insipid and predictable and thought the book was overlong .I hate giving a bad review but I have to be honest and say it just didn't excite me.If the characters had been better developed and the story had been tightened up and the book had been punchier and shorter than the premise could have worked.A chance missed I think. Thanks to Netgalley and the publishers for an ARC in return for an honest review.

I'm a big fan of post-apocalyptic fiction, and this one did grab me to start, as our protagonist Jamie, wakes up on a planet deep in the solar system, to discover everyone else has turned to dust. As someone who had escaped her past on Planet Earth by moving to this remote outpost, you'd think she'd be over the moon that the rest of humanity had been wiped out, but as the loneliness kicks in and she hears a scrambled message from Earth, she decides to set out to find out if there are other people left in the solar system besides herself.
What follows is a slightly odd quasi-romance / thriller / sci-fi adventure that sometimes feels like it's trying to do too much at once. Also, Jamie is a bit of a disappointing heroine as she seems determined to try and stalk her idiot ex around the solar system. As she teams up with other survivors, can she take steps to save the human race, or is she inadvertently dooming it to extinction? Well, you'll find out if you read the book, which on the whole is worth the effort. It does get a bit daft at times, but does have a good solid tale at its core.

I try my darndest not to read reviews of books before I have read them myself, particularly where ARC titles are concerned because I want to be sure that I'm giving you guys my opinion and not just rehashing what another book blogger has already said. But with The Space Between the Stars I happened to catch a glimpse of a couple of reviews that seemed to be a bit cross that this wasn't overly sci-fi-y. Now if you need parades of aliens or detailed spaceship analysis to enjoy a sci-fi book that is totally fine, we all have our preferences and this book may not be your cup of tea. But for me, someone who isn't averse to science fiction but just needs a lighter dose this was perfect. I think the sci fi setting was necessary for the plot to work, the long distances between planets, the isolation and also the science and technology needed to make this make sense would only work in a futuristic setting.

But it is the themes of the story that are the most important (in this instance at least) and those themes would make for compelling storytelling even if you took them out of this setting. The exodus these characters undertake is in many ways timeless, the whole book is a homecoming, it's striving to find hope in a time of hopelessness, it's the joy and also the pain of survival against the odds, it explores complexities of faith when faith doesn't make any sense. In a more 'definite' sense this book deals a lot with infertility and a lot of the complex emotions that can spring up from that.

What struck me most (and what I really wasn't expecting) was the close bonds I formed with the characters by the end of the book. I know some people have said they found the female protagonist Jamie to be a bit whiney but honestly if basically everyone I had known had died I might be inclined to be a tad miserable too! So, though I would never have believed it when I started the book, I ended the book in tears I was just so emotional! Ok yes, I cry at a lot of things, never let me watch the first 10 minutes of Up but even so- me crying at a book that involves a spaceship is practically unheard of.

This book deals with a lot of big topics, I've already mentioned infertility, there's also a character with Autism and a character who is a sex worker. There's a bit of non-consensual activity which might trouble some readers (if you ever have a question about a book and you want a bit more information to see if it will be ok for you to read please feel free to contact me via my twitter or my contact page and I'll be happy to respond as best I can). As I am not someone who has Autism or who is a sex worker I'm obviously not the person to decide that this representation is suitable, however there didn't seem anything overly problematic about it (again, always happy to be called out if I'm wrong about something).

I was really pleasantly surprised at how much I liked this book. Again, if you're looking for high sci-fi you might want to search elsewhere, but if you want a book that makes you really think about what you might do in similar situations (though hopefully we never find ourselves there) then why not pick up The Space Between the Stars which publishes June 1st.

My rating: 4/5 stars (because it wasn't perfect, perhaps a few too many worthy moments)

By the way, I received a free digital advanced review copy of this book from the publisher (Macmillan) via netgalley in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own and I wouldn't recommend it if I hadn't enjoyed it!