9 June 2015

Review #240: From a Distant Star by Karen McQuestion



My rating: 4 of 5 stars


“After all the planets and all the hosts you've left behind, you've finally found the place and the body you'd die for. I think you've found your home, Wanderer.”

---- Stephenie Meyer




Karen McQuestion, a best-selling American author, pens her new young adult novel, From a Distant Star that is a cute love story masked inside a story about an alien from a faraway planet in some different galaxy who unfortunately landed up in the backyard of a dying teenager due to an accident, but this alien is not someone who have a body or mind to speak for himself, if he needs to survive, he needs a human body ASAP.




Synopsis:

Seventeen-year-old Emma was the only one who hadn’t given up on her boyfriend, Lucas. Everyone else—his family, his friends, his doctors—believed that any moment could be his last. So when Lucas miraculously returns from the brink of death, Emma thinks her prayers have been answered.

As the surprised town rejoices, Emma begins to question whether Lucas is the same boy she’s always known. When she finds an unidentifiable object on his family’s farm—and government agents come to claim it—she begins to suspect that nothing is what it seems. Emma’s out-of-this-world discovery may be the key to setting things right, but only if she and Lucas can evade the agents who are after what they have. With all her hopes and dreams on the line, Emma sets out to save the boy she loves. And with a little help from a distant star, she might just have a chance at making those dreams come true.



To be fair, I can straight away compare this book with Stephenie Meyer's book, The Host and I don't know, if the author have invented the dancing car concept or not, but in a similar recent Bollywood movie called PK, where this dancing car concept was used, it might be a coincidence not a copied concept, I believe.

Lucas is a dying teenager who is suffering from cancer, whose girlfriend, Emma never leaves his side day and night. Their love is cute, but they all knew, Lucas will die very soon, and not able to digest the hardcore truth, Emma rushes to the house of a modern witch who is famous for curing people from terminal diseases and making love potions, and feeling moved by Emma's grief and pain, that witch agrees to help her, little did she knew that on the night Emma used the magic potion to cure Lucas will bring alive his boyfriend, only it was not Lucas, it was some alien, named Scout who lives like a host. Problem arises when Lucas' miracle cure hits the local television and grabs the eyeballs of the government authorities, along with some mean people trying to hurt the helpless alien.

Back to my review, the writing is very flawless and alluring and I was immediately drawn to the heart of the story. The pacing of the book is really great, since the moment, Scout was introduced, I felt absolutely engaged and captivated by his charms and the actions unfolding right in front of my eyes. The author have layered her plot with some catching action scenes and a lot of cat-mouse-chase with the government authorities trying to get a grab on Lucas's alter ego, Scout. The adventure that Scout and Emma take to find his spaceship is really thrilling to read about it, and the author have intricately portrayed those scenes.

The characters are nice and captivating to read about except the protagonist, Emma. The author let's us see the story through both Scout's POV and Emma's POV and that helped me a lot to contemplate with these two main characters. Emma is a daring girl, who has a strong determination to not to give up on her dying boyfriend, whereas Scout, trying and adjusting to the human niche, is strong enough to take chances and change his strict demeanor. The rest of the cast is also quite well-developed, unfortunately, I couldn't find any resemblance with real-life characters' mannerism in this book. Now given the fact, this is a science-fiction novel, I would rather say, the real-life resemblance doesn't matter that much!

There is also a bit of chemistry between Emma and Scout inside Lucas' body, which is very sweet and compassionately depicted by the author. Emma and Scout had a friendly bond, or rather say very brotherly and sisterly bond, which is strong enough to become weak under any circumstances.

Overall, the book is like an adventure trip taken along side with an alien in a human body across the state Wisconsin, the landscape of which is vividly featured by the author in this book.

Verdict: YA science fiction and fantasy lovers will enjoy reading this book.

Courtesy: Thanks to the author, Karen McQuestion, for providing me with a copy of her book, in return for an honest review. 
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Author Info:
Karen McQuestion is the bestselling author of books for all ages. Some of her titles include Hello Love, Life on Hold, The Long Way Home, and the Edgewood series. Her publishing story has been covered by the Wall Street Journal, Entertainment Weekly, and the national NPR show, The Story with Dick Gordon. She has also appeared on ABC’s World News Now and America This Morning. McQuestion lives with her husband and kids in Hartland, Wisconsin.
Visit her here 


Book Purchase Links:

2 comments:

  1. I am not sure about this book. I loved The Host and knowing it is pretty similar makes me question it somewhat, and then it also being like a movie. It seems like a mesh of the two! Although it does seem like a unique idea, I am not sure there. Good job on you for catching out what bothered you about it in some places!

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  2. Hmm, I agree with you :-) Thanks for stopping by:-)

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