Tuesday, August 14, 2012

Review: Mothership by Martin Leicht & Isla Neal

From the Back Cover:

Teen pregnancy is never easy—especially not when extraterrestrials are involved. The first in a new trilogy.

Elvie Nara was doing just fine in the year 2074. She had a great best friend, a dad she adored, and bright future working on the Ares Project on Mars. But then she had to get involved with sweet, gorgeous, dumb-as-a-brick Cole—and now she’s pregnant.

Getting shipped off to the Hanover School for Expecting Teen Mothers was not how Elvie imagined spending her junior year, but she can go with the flow. That is, until a team of hot commandos hijacks the ship—and one of them turns out to be Cole. She hasn’t seen him since she told him she’s pregnant, and now he’s bursting into her new home to tell her that her teachers are aliens and want to use her unborn baby to repopulate their species? Nice try, buddy. You could have just called.

So fine, finding a way off this ship is priority number one, but first Elvie has to figure out how Cole ended up as a commando, work together with her arch-nemesis, and figure out if she even wants to be a mother—assuming they get back to Earth in one piece.

My Thoughts:

Sounds kind of crazy, right? Well, it is!

What a treat! Wildly imaginative and inventive, with a smart, no-nonsense heroine with a wise-ass sense of humor. I grinned and chuckled through the whole thing. The story is super original and Elvie's voice is fresh and real. I was hooked from page one and blew through this in a day. This story takes a few teen cliches and dumps them on their ears. (And a few alien cliches, too!) The plot is tight and full of twists, and to top it all off is an "oh, snap!" ending I did not see coming, and that has me salivating for the sequel.

I'm trying to avoid spoilers here, so I'm keeping it short and sweet. I pretty much loved it and I'm recommending it to all of my YA-reading friends. Worried about the teen pregnancy thing? Don't let it throw you off. This is a humorous alien adventure story, but it also has a healthy dose of "See? This is what happens when you have unprotected premarital sex." And there are some more serious moments as Elvie contemplates her future and that of her child. Elvie and Cole make a great team of brains and brawn, but I am bumping down my rating a notch because I would have liked to see their backstory explored a bit more to make their feelings for one another more plausible. But can you really call it a complaint when your only issue is that you wanted more? If you're looking for something smart and sassy and totally new and different in YA, Mothership is it.

My Rating:  4.5 Stars out of 5

*Please Note: This review references an advance copy received from the publisher through the Amazon Vine program. These are my unbiased opinions and I was not compensated in any other way for reviewing this book.

1 comment:

  1. Seriously, simply reading the description had me hooked. I like a little bit of zany mixed with humor AND a good story. Thanks for the review; this one is going on my list! :)

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