Hunt the Stars holds a special place in my heart because it’s the first adult sci-fi romance I ever read.
Given my obsession with sci-fi romance, you might be surprised to know that I discovered this book and the whole genre less than a year ago. That’s probably even more of a surprise if you know I penned my debut novel, a sci-fi romance, back in 2022.
Do some simple math and you’ll realize the absurdity–I wrote my first sci-fi romance novel before I even knew the genre existed!
Laugh all you want. I deserve it.
In my defence, though, I have read and watched a LOT of science fiction. And I also adore fantasy romance. So it’s not a huge leap to see how these loves might come together.
I had written A Symphony of Starlight assuming it was YA science fiction. So when my writing group read the first chapter and told me it fell firmly in a genre they called “sci-fi romance,” I was a little skeptical. How could I be writing a genre I didn’t know existed?
Their recommendation: read something by Jessie Mihalik.
Long story short, I picked up Hunt the Stars and fell in love with my new favourite genre.
Jessie Mihalik’s well-written and fun sci-fi romance is the perfect intro to the genre because it combines everything I love about the homey found-family vibe of Firefly and other classic spaceship adventures with the action and steam of the best romantic suspense.
After surviving a deadly war between humans and Valoffs, Captain Octavia Zorolla keeps the remnants of her squad together, scraping by on low-payout bounty missions.
But when money runs out and Tavi needs to get a crew member off station fast, she’s forced to take a suspiciously too-good-to-be-true mission from her old enemy, Valoff war hero Torran Fletcher.
Tavi doesn’t like the idea of the psychic alien warrior and his entourage staying on her ship, but the time they spend travelling together grows her relationship with Torran from enmity to grudging respect and then to heated attraction. These enemies seem to be turning into lovers. Until they arrive on Torran’s home planet to discover he’s been hiding a dangerous truth about the mission’s secret objective.
Can Tavi trust her old enemy on this unexpected and deadly new mission? Or is it all a trap aimed at reigniting the war that almost destroyed both races?
The fun of this book is the sweet homey vibe on the ship, where Tavi and Torran discover they both enjoy cooking for their crew, aliens and humans get sucked into binge-watching a soap opera together, and a hilarious and cute animal sidekick cons bounty hunters and passengers alike into filling its bowl with extra treats.
The sweetness doesn’t take away from the suspense though. As Tavi and her crew arrive on the alien home world, there’s plenty of mystery and action. And the ending had my heart pumping so fast I couldn’t put the book down until I knew all my favourite characters would come out OK.
Best of all, Hunt the Stars is the first book in the Starlight’s Shadow series, which follows the love stories and action-adventure missions of the rest of the crew while continuing the same space-opera scale overarching political plot line.
If you haven’t tried sci-fi romance yet, why not start with the first book I started with? Hunt the Stars is an excellent intro to the genre. If you’re anything like me, it’s sure to have you hooked!
LOL this was also my first adult sci fi romance book. It kind of got me into the genre. I’d always liked sci fi, but had been reading some “romantasy”, but I wanted space ships and blasters, not Fae! I didn’t even realize there was a genre for what I wanted, but I’m so glad I found it!
Exactly! Romantasy but with space ships!