Riley Redgate

Wrote this review in 2015 and never posted it! Also worth noting 2015-me sent Redgate a message about the potentially asexual character and she wrote back a lovely and thoughtful response.
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This was an extremely engaging tale with seven unique characters that I came to love almost equally.

Though this was told from seven different perspectives, the characters were all fantastically crafted and had their own issues and personalities. They all melded together well, and it was easy to keep track show more of who played what role at various points in the story. Each felt real, as if this was a series of memoirs instead of a novel.

To me, Claire felt like the main character, though I'm not even sure if she was my favourite. I did get sick of her complaining about how insecure she was and how she used to have braces and acne, but my dislike of her kind of contributed to my enjoyment of the book overall--in real life, the odds of me liking seven people are low.

I loved how well one character's pansexual identity was played. There's another character who is likely asexual and I was disappointed by how that wasn't addressed; however, I highly respect that it was present if not explicitly so. Both identities felt very natural and very real, not at all as though they were forced.

The plot of this was multifaceted with main thread pulling together the various lines and providing a beginning and an end, but I like how all characters had issues that related to each other's issues and propelled the plot forward without having them all be caught up in the scandal.

This was a really well crafted and fun high school book, and I look forward to more from Redgate. show less

It's the year 2072 and the world knows that in the near future there will be a massive volcanic eruption that will mean the end of life on Earth. A global plan is in place to build rockets to send some people to the nearest inhabitable planet. When an eruption happens months too early, 53 of the kids whose parents are working on the rocket prototypes are the only survivors. They boarded the prototype Lazarus that they were there to tour and launched into space on a journey of over 1000 show more years. Luckily, Eli, the pilot's daughter, is onboard along with Leigh Chen, First Daughter of the US President. Leigh is well trained as a politician, to say the right thing at the right time, to give answers that aren't really answers and calm everyone's nerves. Eli, who has never had friends her own age, relishes her position of power and becomes the de facto leader of the group of kids from around the world. Leigh is appointed Chief of Staff, a voice to Eli's one-sided decisions based solely on survival. However, as tensions rise within the group over everything from time in the VR simulator to food to turning around to rescue an astronaut that may still be aboard a space station, Leigh begins to question her decisions and find a voice of her own.

Alone Out Here is a suspenseful and realistic young adult science fiction story of survival. I loved the premise of Earth's political leaders being woefully underprepared for a climate catastrophe and unable to come to consensus on how to solve it without greed and corruption taking hold. A bunch of teens and pre-teens aboard a spaceship alone goes about as well as anyone would expect as they try to survive with limited resources, constant power struggles, differences in opinion and trying to manage the grief and disbelief of their planet and everyone on it being destroyed. The characters were a very diverse group since they were children of Lazurus' engineers, scientists, pilots and World Leaders. Leigh and Eli's characters were focused on the most as their seemingly similar personalities diverged as they discovered who they truly were aboard the Lazarus. I enjoyed watching Leigh develop from a people pleaser into a person who could still help others while being true to herself. Her relationship with Anis was also well done, helping her realize her potential while not overtaking the story. Eli's character is interesting, at first it seems like she is the only one willing to make difficult decisions and have a plan, but as she becomes more powerful, her decisions seem more and more self-serving. While being set in space in a not-so-distant future, Alone Out Here still deals with very real teen issues such as depression, addiction, friendship and romance in thoughtful ways. With a thrilling and unexpected ending, Alone Out Here is an exciting young adult science fiction drama.

This book was received for free in return for an honest review. show less

This one is deceptive. You begin with the premise that Earth is going to experience a volcanic eruption so devastating that the resulting ash and gases will kill off everything. Even knowing that, governments around the world continue to squabble while scrambling to build enough spacecraft so a segment of the population will be able to travel to another solar system where a planet, much like ours exists. The lottery system to select passengers is barely in place before there are ever show more stronger hints of corruption.
This is the background when a small number of teens are on site where the first ship is deployed. They're jolted into action by what they believe is the eruption happening a year early. In short order, they're hustled to the ship and head into space. The teens soon realize their situation is far more precarious than they first thought. What ensues is a mix of them trying to wrap their heads around the situation, a select few taking control, sabotage, desperation, and the evolution of something halfway between 1984 and Animal Farm. While it begins slowly, the pace picks up 1/3 of the way through and there are plenty of white knuckle moments as well as a double surprise at the end. A great read for those who love good science fiction. show less

This book did a lot of things really well and two things only okay. It’s a well-written YA novel, with a strong cast of characters and good humour. The music and the friendships were great, as was Jordan’s slowly becoming more confident in herself and realizing she’d gotten in over her head.

There’s a lot of diversity too—not just bisexual Chinese-American Jordan, but another East Asians, a fat black kid, a gay Sikh, other gay characters, a disabled man, even a kid with dyslexia! show more Redgate also brings up financial inequalities and the tensions and shame those can bring up. She does a good job addressing the assorted injustices and microaggressions her characters face too, without turning the book into an issue novel.

However, there’s one element of the diversity that Redgate falls a bit short on, and that’s the queer aspects. To get it out of the way first, Jordan’s first few attempts to work out or declare her bisexuality are met with “but shouldn’t you know already?” and not much of the counter-argument that not everyone just knows. Like, it’s there as subtext, I just felt it should’ve been more obvious. (Caveat: not bi.)

Similarly, there are obvious parallels between Jordan passing as Julian and trans people transitioning, except that for Jordan it’s not nearly so serious—all of which is addressed in the book, though briefly, and Jordan’s “I’m doing it anyway” reaction to the parallels is a Poor Teen Life Choice™ that again, isn’t countered as well as it could’ve been. (Caveat: not trans.)

Overall, Noteworthy is cute and fun and a good opener for further conversations on gender, injustice, and poverty, but it never felt overly fresh or different from other teen boarding school novels and it fell a bit short on calling out any of the issues in the story. That said, I’d give it a very solid 7/10 except that the problems with the bi/trans stuff dock it marks.

Warnings: Possibly not the greatest choice if you’re trans, but not the worst either. Biphobia, fatphobia that may double as anti-Black racism, systematic ill-treatment of the poor and disabled.

6/10 show less