When Lilah wakes up cold and surrounded by blue strangers with horns, she doesn’t know what’s going on. The last thing she remembers is falling asleep while watching TV. Her entire life is turned upside down because there’s no going home, and Not-Hoth is certainly nothing like Earth. It doesn’t help that the aliens who abducted her removed her cochlear implants, making it even harder to communicate with the aliens who are helping get her to safety. At least she has her sister… until one of those aliens helping them decides to abduct her in hopes of resonating.
I absolutely love this series! This time around, we follow Lilah and Rokan through their rotating perspectives as Lilah goes through one hell of an ice planet welcome party. The only person she knows is her sister, Maddie, who is also her only means of communication on this planet. Scared, cold, alone, and abducted by a horny blue dude hoping to resonate with her, we watch Lilah struggle to come to terms with the fact that she’s never going home again. We also watch her slowly embrace living on this new planet, make friends and fall in love with Rokan, and realize that she’s a total badass.
There’s a lack of disability representation in media and literature, so I was excited to see Lilah was our lead protagonist. I was worried about how this was going to pan out when one of the characters said that the khui would “fix” her hearing. Actually, I was quite concerned that the end of the book would have the khui turn her into a hearing character through divine khui shenanigans of some sort. Instead, I was excited to find that nothing of the sort happens, and Lilah finds herself in a community trying to learn ASL rather than treating her like an inconvenience while making her jump through hoops to talk to anyone.
I also really liked Rokan. We didn’t see too much of him in the previous books, but he’s a very sweet and kind hearted character who wears his heart on his sleeve. I love how family oriented he is and how excited he gets when he talks about his family. I also really like Maddie, who is often referred to as the angry one by everyone but Lilah, but I honestly don’t blame her. Imagine waking up on a distant planet, told you can never go home, and now you need to get the khui and eventually resonate and have babies whether or not you want kids if you ever resonate. You’re going to be terrified, sad, pissed, or all of the above. Maddie is clearly all of the above, but everyone is seeing the anger, especially when Lilah gets abducted.
All in all, this was an excellent read. I really enjoyed the characters as well as the new things we continue to learn about Not-Hoth. Did I mention that it turns out that the metlaks are basically Yeti’s? Yeah! Now that’s exciting. The weird non-friendship of sorts that Lilah ends up in with a random metlak has me hoping we learn more about the metlaks. I’m currently convinced that they also crash landed on this ice planet at some point. I need to know more!
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