The Loneliest Girl in the Universe by Lauren James

 

After finishing The Cold is in Her Bones, I was still in the mood for a shorter, easy read. I decided to try The Loneliest Girl in the Universe by Lauren James next. I've had this young adult sci-fi novel sitting on my shelf for a while now and I was in the mood to finally see what it was all about. It had been a while since I was really sucked into an exciting, suspenseful book, so I was hoping that this one would scratch that itch for me. 

The plot follows Romy Silvers, a teenage girl on board the Infinity-- a spaceship currently heading for an Earth-like planet in deep space. The goal is to try and establish a colony there, but the journey is a long one and Romy won't arrive for decades. She was born and raised on the ship, and life in space is all she knows. Years ago, an accident killed all of the original crew members on the mission, including Romy's parents, so she is completely on her own. Her only contact with other people is through daily electronic messages she receives from NASA, but as they take years to reach her current position, the information in them is already old once she reads them. It's a very lonely existence, but she does the best she can to keep the mission going.

One day she receives a welcome bit of news in one of her messages. A new ship, the Eternity, has been dispatched to help her continue her mission. It is a newer ship than the Infinity, and a lot faster. It will catch up to her in about a year and help her to reach her destination in much less time. Excited, she begins exchanging messages with the Eternity's captain, a young man named J. They are able to communicate much more quickly since their ships are relatively close to each other, and they develop a friendship that starts inching towards romance. 

Romy is counting down the days until the Infinity and J arrive, but suddenly, some troubling developments arise. Her messages from NASA abruptly cut off due to some sort of political uprising on Earth, she begins receiving messages from a new government with stressful demands, and she starts noticing some inconsistencies in J's messages to her. Even worse, she starts suffering unnerving flashbacks and nightmares about the accident that killed all the astronauts on her ship years ago. She must sort out if she is merely struggling with paranoia after all the years she's spent alone or if something nefarious is really going on. Then, if something bad truly is happening, she must figure out how to stop it all on her own.

I ended up enjoying this novel quite a bit. I thought it had an interesting premise, and James does a nice job of slowly building up suspense throughout the story. There is a rather abrupt tone shift partway through as the plot moves from being romance focused to more action/adventure focused, but I thought this worked pretty well. As Romy is pulled out of her familiar routine by the events of the story, so is the reader by the shift in tone. I thought the speed at which James released information was great as well. There are lots of secrets surrounding what happened with the original crew of the Infinity and with Romy's parents and it is doled out steadily in bits and pieces that kept me turning the pages. I really wanted to know the whole story, and once all of it was revealed, it didn't disappoint. There were good twists throughout and the overall theme about how everyone has the potential for heroism inside them was nice to see develop.

This novel was consistently in four-star territory for most of the time I spent reading it, but the ending let me down a little. Several things happen in rapid succession in the closing chapters of the novel that are so impossible that they totally broke my suspension of disbelief. Obviously, there are a lot of impossible things in sci-fi novels, and that generally doesn't bother me at all. However, some of the events in the final conflict were just so ridiculous that I had to laugh. It spoiled some of the carefully crafted tension that James had been building for me and lowered my rating.

Ultimately, I did still think that The Loneliest Girl in the Universe was a fun read. I enjoyed the sci-fi setting, I thought the plot was interesting, and I liked a lot of the twists. Romy was a pretty relatable character, especially for quiet, anxious people like myself, and I was invested in her story. I wish the ending had been a little more realistic, but I was still pretty entertained. I'll be happy to donate this one to my classroom library so that some of my students can enjoy it. 

Challenge Tally

Clear the Shelves 2021: 20/50 (donate)

Total Books Read in 2021: 41