What a great find!  I saw a tweet about this book with a quote that read “So she’s a skeezer?  What’s a skeezer?  A boyfriend stealer.  Lol.”  That one line made me curious enough to look this book up on Amazon, and the synopsis made it sound good enough to read.  As I started reading, the writing was so good, the main character, Kricket, was flawed and funny, that before I knew it, I had read the entire first book in the series and immediately bought the second.

This synopsis is directly from Amazon.com‘s website.

Kricket Hollowell never wished upon stars. She was too busy hiding in plain sight, eluding Chicago’s foster care system. As her eighteenth birthday approaches, she now eagerly anticipates the day she’ll stop running and finally find her place in the world.

That day comes when she meets a young Etharian soldier named Trey Allairis, who has been charged with coming to Earth to find Kricket and transport her to her true home. As danger draws close, he must protect her until she can wield the powers she cannot use on Earth…and he soon realizes that counting a galaxy of stars would be easier than losing this extraordinary girl.

Kyon knows the powerful depths of Kricket’s gifts—gifts he’ll control when he takes her for his tribe and leads the forces that will claim Ethar and destroy his enemies, starting with Trey Allairis. Now, Kricket faces the most difficult choice of her life: whether to wage a battle for survival or a fight for love.

Kricket is not human.  She thinks she is, but their are a few weird things that she can’t explain. Her hair, when cut, turns into ash, and then regrows to a long length immediately.  Her eyes are a trippy violet color, and she can tell when someone is lying to her.  Kricket, being raised in the foster care system, has learned to trust only a few people.    She’s a few months away from her eighteenth birthday, and emancipation, when she is approached by three men on a train with black hair and violet eyes who try to kidnap her.  They say they are going to take her back home to Rafe to face her crimes.  Rafe?  Crimes?  Of course she thinks they are crazy, runs away and is almost caught by three other men, one of whom claims she is his consort.  Needless to say Kricket is kind of freaked out by all of this, and escapes these three guys as well.  I’m guessing you know that she is eventually caught, and returned to Rafe.

Krickets parents were the Romeo and Juliet of their planet.  Her father was a Rafe, a dark haired and violet eyed soldier.  Her mother was an Alameeda, a platinum blonde priestess who could see into the future.  They had a forbidden love and escaped to earth to raise their child in secret.  Under Different Stars is a fantasy tale about many things that we, here on earth are still fighting for and against.  It is a story about power and inequality.  The use of “houses” is a clever  way to explore a “great” race theme.  Alameeda, a blonde haired blue eyed race draws comparisons to the German Aryan race of WWII.  Their priestesses are powerful beings yet are given no choices. They are tied to a man as consort against their will, and bred to provide daughters who will become future priestesses. These men use their priestesses powers to gain an advantage over the other houses and to keep Alameeda powerful.

Kricket, a half Rafe and Alameeda priestess, proves to be a sarcastic, sassy handful, but also develops some new and improved powers.  I enjoyed this world and Krickets increased self confidence as she races from one problem to the next.  I really enjoyed the new language that the author created for this world, and Krickets use of slang was very entertaining.  Amy A. Bartol has done a great job of developing a character that girls will want to root for, while also giving her an honorable love interest, and an evil for the two of them to fight.  If you love fantasy romances, then you will enjoy this YA story.

 ❤️❤️❤️❤️❣
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Copyright 2016 Deborah Kehoe A Chick Who Reads All Rights Reserved