2.5
A great premise, but not fun to read. Some good moments but overall a disappointment. Some poetics that stick with you. Not the space adventure that the abstract promises.

Heartbreaking and beautiful.
Not my usual genre but I gave it try and I'm glad I did. This a beautiful book about humans, human nature, and home.

Favorite quote:
""...what it’s like just before you’re born. Babies can hear their mother’s voices, they get distressed, they feel pain, even in their mother’s stomach. They turn towards the light, like all of us. The womb, though, is the only world they have ever known. They can see all of it, the beginning and the end, and of course, they think there is nothing else. Can’t even conceive of it.

So, being born, being dragged out into the cold, into the searing lights and all the noise, must feel like dying – like their whole world disappearing along with every single thing they ever knew. Maybe dying is like that too; none of us know what’s out there. But we’ve experienced something a little like it already. Being born was the best thing that ever happened to us. The world is bigger and more beautiful than we ever could have imagined and on the other side of it there were people we’d never met who already love us. They’ve been excited. They’ve been waiting.’"

The main thing that sucked me in with this book was Oh's use of language. Her prose felt very poetic. As I delved deeper into the novel, I did begin to get attached to the characters but this was a much longer process than normal. Normally, if I don't become quickly attached to characters, I don't finish the book.

2.75/5

3.5 stars - RTC.
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There’s just something I love about teenage astronauts. Do You Dream of Terra-Two? is a story of six teenagers getting ready and setting off on a mission to Terra-Two. I listened to the audiobook and I think it was really well done. I think the narrators did a great job of reading this story. I do have to mention that this is a character focused story. The plot of the story is to successfully get to Terra-Two and honestly it was unclear whether or not they did which was disappointing. But the characters were really well done and the audiobook kept me engaged and interesting in their stories.
These six teens were all so interesting in different ways. They have been studying at Dalton (basically an astronaut academy) for several years and the time has finally come for the six (and there three adult mentors. Yes! There are adults with them in space!) Except the day before the launch, one of the six dies. It’s unclear if she kills herself or if it was an accident. The program decides that the launch must go on as planned, so they call in one of the backup crew members, Jesse. I really liked Jesse. He was sort of an oddball, but he wanted to be an astronaut and go into space so badly. But the way he came to be on the mission made it so that the rest of the crew treat him as ‘other.’ This was obviously hard for him. His part of the story was a tough one. There’s also Henry, who is in training to be the team’s commander. He’s actually kind of a dick and plays some pretty cruel pranks on Jesse. But as the story goes on it’s clear that being pilot and commander is really all he has in life. I wouldn’t say that I liked Henry, but I understood him better by the time the story was over. Poppy is the face of the crew. She’s a language expert with an affinity for learning new languages. She’s also the media person. She does video updates and interviews the crew for the public. I liked Poppy. She grew up with her mother and they never had much. She was ecstatic to be chosen to travel to Terra-Two, but life in space turned out to be harder than she anticipated. She struggles with depression, sometimes spending days in her bunk without getting up. I really liked this inclusion in the story. I’m sure this is something that many real-life astronauts struggle with (not that many of them are traveling for twenty-three years to a new planet, but you know what I mean). Poppy gets help from one of the adults, the medic, traveling with them, and the two figure out a treatment plan involving medication. Next we have Eliot, who also struggles with mental health issues. The original crew member, that Jesse replaced, was Eliot’s girlfriend. He struggles because he’s sure that she killed herself. He hallucinates seeing her floating alongside the ship out in space. Eliot’s chapters were almost hard to listen to because he was struggling so much and I just wanted to give him a hug. Finally, the sisters, Astrid and Juno. These two were fascinating, but also sometimes I had a hard time remembering which sister’s chapter I was listening to. I honestly don’t remember what Astrid’s job was while in space because her story focused on how she got sucked into a sort of religion that’s appeared in the days leading up to the launch. Astrid becomes obsessed with Tessa Dalton (yes, their academy was named after her) who is the woman that discovered Terra-Two. Astrid had vivid dreams about being on Terra-Two. It all honestly gets a little weird, but it was fascinating in the way that watching a car crash is. It was an interesting comment on religion (though that’s just how I took it and I don’t know if that was the intention). Juno is training to become the next medic for the crew. She’s trains alongside the adult medic on board. I really liked this aspect of the story because we got to know one of the adults a bit more. Juno has an eating disorder; she also struggles with feeling like she doesn’t belong because of a secret that I won’t reveal. I liked Juno. She seemed sweet and kind, though I was disappointed that she took so long to befriend Jesse.
Overall, this book definitely had problems. Like, three of these characters have serious issues and I don’t understand how were these not addressed or realized with the intense and comprehensive mental and physical tests that the crew had to go through before the launch. Though there is something that’s revealed that suggests there was reasons for this. I also think it was odd that though there were three adults on board with the crew (an engineer, a commander, and a medic), three adults that trained these kids every day, but they didn’t seem to have a very big presence in the story. I also didn’t like the ending. It was left very open ended and we never got to find out whether or not the crew even made it to Terra-Two. I will say that there was drama and action while the crew was traveling even though there was minimal plot. I did like this book, but the ending damped that enjoyment a bit. I think those that like teenagers in space will like this book.

I never knew where this book was taking me next, and then I was always happy with where it took me. The trajectory of the story was very different than I expected, but Temi Oh wrote such organic, living characters that I always believed that whatever smart or illogical or emotional choice they made, they made because of their life experience and the stress they were under and because of who they are. I like books with an ensemble cast like this, and it was always great to see the different characters' reactions to events. I definitely recommend it, even if I can't quite describe this book.

Not quite what I was expecting. Interesting enough, but no real excitement until about 3/4 of the way through.