Review: The Loneliest Girl in the Universe

The Loneliest Girl in the Universe

By: Lauren James

My Rating: 4/5 Stars

Genre: SciFi, Thriller

Page Count: 290

Synopsis: Can you fall in love with someone you’ve never met, never even spoken to – someone who is light years away?

Romy Silvers is the only surviving crew-member of a spaceship travelling to a new planet, on a mission to establish a second home for humanity amongst the stars. Alone in space, she is the loneliest girl in the universe until she hears about a new ship which has launched from Earth – with a single passenger on board. A boy called J.

Their only communication with each other is via email – and due to the distance between them, their messages take months to transmit across space. And yet Romy finds herself falling in love.

But what does Romy really know about J? And what do the mysterious messages which have started arriving from Earth really mean?

Sometimes, there’s something worse than being alone . . .

The first section of this review will be spoiler free

 

Wow where to begin? This book was not what I expected it to be at all. I say this in the best way possible, this book drew me in with its simple and endearing beginning and then shattered everything I thought I knew and left me gaping at the pages, not quite sure what I just read. It is very rare that a book or even movie surprises me, and this book definitely managed to do just that. I loved the writing style, as it was split between the first person narrative of Romy Sivers (our protagonist), her fan fiction stories, and her messages with the other characters. It was fun to read through so many different means of communication, I really felt like I got to know Romy, and experience everything alongside her. The book was short (less than 300 pages), but if anything I almost felt like the story moved a bit too slowly at times. Like I just wanted something to happen to shake things up, which may have been the point, since we were supposed to empathize with Romy and her life all alone onboard the spaceship.

Without giving too much away, if you are going into this book thinking and hoping for some gushy space romance akin to The Space Between us you may want to look elsewhere, because this is a different story. I knew very little about this book before reading it, I had only read one or two reviews of it. I think that is the way to go, because the more you know about this story before you start the less effective it’s suspense an twists will be on you. So I guess I just told you in my review not to read reviews for it…..

 

***SPOILERS***

 

If any of you have read this book, can we talk about it please? I am still in shock and need to dissect this with someone! So J the boy Romy has been e-mailing with for most of the book because he is on another spaceship headed to meet her, turns out to be psycho who lied about who he was, made her fall for him, all so that he could murder her and torture her in a misguided search for revenge because his parents died on her spaceship and he blamed her. Wow, he does some seriously messed up shit to her, and I’m not just talking about manipulation and the serious cat fishing that was going on. He pretends earth has been decimated by war, blocks all the messages she usually receives from earth and has her make a bunch of alterations to her ship just to make her life miserable. I mean this guy seriously needs professional help. Also the fact that he is like 35 and is doing all this to a 16 year old girl is so disturbing! I just felt like the ending (she kills him, thank god) was so abrupt, I needed more time to process what happened, and to see Romy finally happy.

 

What are your thought on this book? did it shock you as much as it did me?