Defy the Stars by Claudia Grey - 4 stars

I finished reading this beautiful and infuriating book about 20 minutes ago. The book was amazing! I am not one for 'sci-fi space' books, and yet I fell in love with this fast and hard. So why 4 stars? because I am angry. It is taking every bit of strength in me not to give it a even lower score. I HATED the ending. I cannot stress that enough. I will explain... but first lets talk a little about all the awesome things about the book and the many reasons, even though I disliked the ending, you should still read it.

In this book, the people from earth are working its way into destroying its planet. Not hard to see how that could be true right?! Anyway, there are other planets that are inhabitable, Genesis being one of them. But Genesis has closed itself off from the rest of the world and has taken care of their planet. They do not want to share their healthy planet with those who would not take care of it. They sound like the good guys, and I am sure they are in many ways, but it is not without cost. Life on the other planets is not going well. And so, Earth and Genesis are at war. Earth wants to invade, Genesis wants to keep Earth away.

So, clearly the world building is really well done! I was highly impressed.

The main characters are Abel and Noemi. I loved them both.

Noemi is by far one of the bravest characters written. She is a soldier for Genesis willing to die to save the people from her planet. 

Abel is a tech ( a human looking robot ). But, he is one of a kind, The man on Earth who created all the techs only created one like Abel, only one as strong and as close to being a human as possible.We figure out exactly why he created Abel towards the end of the book. 

Side note- technology is rather low in Genesis. No techs.

In a test run for a mission in which Noemi will have to give her life for her people, she brakes from her group and finds Abel. They naturally try to kill each other, being at opposite sides and all. But there are many things about Abel that makes this interesting, one of those things is that he is programmed to follow orders from the highest ranking human on ship, he soon realizes that is Noemi. His ship has been abandoned for 30 years with him locked in it. And against his best wishes (because ta-da: he hopes like a human) he has to obey her.

The story truly takes shape from this moment on and it is BEAUTIFUL!

I was teary so many times. This book was (until the ending) a MASTERPIECE! 

Had the ending been different, this would have been on of those few times where I say 5 is not enough of a score.

But...here we are... the ending.

I'm sure most you won't mind it. After all, if goodreads is not lying to me, there is another book coming,

But you see...that is one of the problems with that ending for me. There is no need for a second book, ONE page could have tied up enough endings to make this a brilliant stand alone. Not all endings need to be tied up in a book, one little meeting could have been enough to make this great.. This book had the potential to have been my favorite stand alone of the year. But 'alas'! It was not meant to be. A second book is coming. One I surely will not like as much as the first because the tension that made this book great is now resolved. There truly is no need for book two. Maybe I should write a two page ending, attach to my copy and ignore a second book is ever happening...