Book Review: Again Behold the Stars by Jessie Latimer
Again Behold the Stars by Jessie Latimer
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
I received an advance digital copy of this novel from the author. All thoughts and opinions are entirely my own.
While YA and its many subgenres has been hit-or-miss for me in the past, I’ve read a lot of truly excellent young adult sci-fi and fantasy over the last few years. Again Behold the Stars is among the very best. The story is cleverly written, compelling, and loaded with humor and heart and heartbreak, with characters who grow and change and win you over. I was excited from the very first page, when we were introduced to our snarky, unusual narrator: the book itself. And that excitement never wavered, as Latimer never lost the plot or the structure or a solitary character. She was juggling so much, and yet she never dropped a single ball.
First, let’s go back to the Narrator, the book itself. The voice here was more than a delightful addition, but was really the backbone of the story. I love the combination of commentary and snark we get periodically from that front. It reminded me of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy or Terry Pratchett or Diana Wynne Jones in tone. One of my favorite picture books from childhood, There’s a Monster at the End of This Book, was also brought to mind. When it came to the Narrator, at least. The actual story being told had a completely different style and voice that was immersive and propulsive. The interludes with the Narrator could have been jarring and distracting in less capable hands, but that dichotomy was really effective here.
Onto the story itself. Here we are following Rigby Rhymes, a teenage girl who has largely lived in her favorite book as her health has continued its downward trajectory. She’s dying, and jealousy over her younger sister’s seemingly perfect life is eating her alive. When Rigby dies suddenly and unexpectedly over the Christmas holidays, without having a chance to tell her sister and parents goodbye, she finds herself on the Train of Thought, where she thinks she’s being taken to the afterlife. Instead, her guardian angels have a task for her: go into the world of her favorite book and save the villain. If she’s successful, she’ll get to live out the rest of her days in her favorite story before passing into the afterlife. When things go terribly awry, she finds herself teaming up with that villain, as well as the hero of the story, to face off against the Seven Deadly Sins, personified as a biker gang.
I enjoyed everything about this. The balance between meta, fourth-wall breaking and the inner plot, between the humor and the heart, was perfect. There was not a single chapter or scene or page that felt superfluous or in any way unnecessary. And Latimer gives us so much character development across our three perspective characters. Even our Narrator grows over the course of the novel, which I thought was so fun. And I love the bookishness carried throughout the story. If you’re a lover of portal fantasy, clean but snarky YA, or you just love stories with heart and a strong voice, this should absolutely find its way onto your reading radar when it’s released on August 11th. I immediately preordered a copy after I finished the last page, because I know this is a book I want in my home, to share with my friends and nieces and to revisit someday in the future.
Below are some of my favorite quotes from the book:
“Nobody said stories must go on for pages and pages and books and books, but everyone seems to prefer them that way.”
“Have you ever loved a book so dearly that reading the last sentence nearly broke your heart?”
“Every reader has a book he or she comes home to, and Thornwell was hers.”
“Every world was ‘made up’ at one time or another. And every world is real, no matter if it’s fictional or not.”
“There must be rules that govern the fiction, or everything falls apart.
“In art, we believe beauty means something. Effort means something.”
“How could she say that it wasn’t fair, when her life had been filled with so much goodness? When she had loved and been loved so deeply?”
“Some sorrows can’t be avoided. But maybe avoiding them is not the point. Maybe, just maybe, sorrow does not always mean The End.”