This wasn't what I thought it was going to be, but I found myself sucked into the stort nevertheless. The biggest way it diverged from my expectations is that it's very much a character-driven books, rather than plot-driven. 

There's quite a diverse cast of characters, many whom I loved and a few which I very much disliked (looking at you, Harry). 

While at it's heart this is a stoey about reaching this utopian planet Terra-Two, a more thsn two dacade long journey away, it's much more and much less than that. All these different characters with all their conplexities and flaws gets their moment in the spotlight. As the main characters are very young, there's very much 'young drama' as well, which sometimes felt a bit meh (to me as an adult), but I had a great time in this story. I didn't think I was going to be all that invested in the beginning, but by the end I was very emotional. 

If you're looking for a character-driven sci-fi and don't mind inaccurate and (what I completely unedcuatedly assume is) somewhat unrealistic space travel history, you might just love this! 

This book was way too slow and boring for me - the first really exciting to occur in the book happened around the 76% mark. Most of the book was just the teen characters arguing and complaining about everything. It doesn't make sense to me that any of these people were cleared to fly. They all have extremely obvious issues, their personalities clash constantly (they will have to live together in a confined space for 23 years!) and they always seem to take the opportunity to make a bad decision. The religious aspects were also really off-putting to me, and it's weird how the writing leans so hard into psychological issues but always seems to shy away from racism and colonialism when they come up.

There were a few quotes I liked (plus the one exciting thing and a couple of the adult characters) but it's not enough to ever recommend this to anyone.