Book Review: ‘The Stars Too Fondly’ by Emily Hamilton (sapphic romcom in space)
Space? Check. Sapphic? Check. Rom-com? Check.
There was no way that this sci-fi debut was escaping me, and I loved it from the first page - ‘The Stars Too Fondly’ has sailed into my favourite books of 2024. I flew through it in only a few sittings after struggling through a reading slump for a few weeks.
Part space odyssey, part Sapphic romcom and all spaceship-stealing fun, Emily Hamilton's breathtaking debut is a wild tale of galaxy-spanning friendship, improbable love, and wonder as vast as the universe itself.
So, here's the thing: Cleo and her friends really, truly didn't mean to steal this spaceship.
They just wanted to know why, twenty years ago, the entire Providence crew vanished without a trace. But then the stupid dark matter engine started all on its own, and now these four twenty-somethings are en route to Proxima Centauri, unable to turn around, and being harangued by a snarky hologram that has the face and attitude of the ship's missing captain, Billie.
Cleo has dreamt of being an astronaut all her life, and Earth is kind of a lost cause at this point, so this should be one of those blessings in disguise people talk about. But as the ship gets deeper into space, the laws of physics start twisting, old mysteries start crawling back to life, and Cleo's initially combative relationship with Billie turns into something deeper and more desperate than either woman is prepared for.
Lying somewhere in the subspace between science fantasy and sapphic rom-com, The Stars Too Fondly is a soaring near-future adventure about dark matter and alternate dimensions, leaving home and finding family, and the galaxy-saving power of letting yourself love and be loved.
This book manages to be a kick-your-feet rom-com while also sustaining a substantial dose of science in the sci-fi and edge of your adventure and action scenes, all coming together for a heck of a book. All of that is balanced with a lot of focus on character development and the interpersonal drama between Cleo, Ros, Kaleisha, Abe and Billie is equally as important to the story and the characters as the precarious situation they find themselves in onboard the Providence.
The diversity and inclusion in ‘The Stars Too Fondly’ is effortless when it comes to gender and sexuality with a sapphic relationship, a non-binary aroace character, a lesbian protagonist and a bisexual love interest with strong racial diversity too. I really love it when these elements are just there, present in the story in the way that they are in life without any focus on coming out or someone coming in contact with hate and ignorance; they’re allowed to exist in the world, and the story, as they are.
There’s also some really interesting commentary of capitalism, the climate crisis and the environment on Earth as this is set on 40 years in the future in 2061 where the Earth is starting to steeply decline and becoming nearly dangerous to live upon. It not only shows the future that we are likely to be facing in my lifetime with the environment, but also the cost of progress at whatever cost and the chokehold of large corporation and the power held by those in charge of big pursestrings.
Playing alongside this we have a complex romance between Cleo, the mastermind of the Providence mishap, and Billie, the hologram of the original captain of the ship. I love the rivals-to-friends-to-lovers dynamic and their banter and the challenges they face in deciding whether to follow their feelings or not. The little moments between them and the way that the rest of the crew reacted to them was so sweet and often funny too and I was completely sold on it. I was championing Cleo and Billie so, so hard from the beginning.
‘The Stars Too Fondly’ is a spellbinding debut. It’s romantic, tense, and brimming with the warmth of found family learning to survive among the stars in a cosy sci-fi romance that I’ll be recommending endlessly.
Thank you to harperVoyager and NetGalley for the review copy.
Written by Sophie
