First of all, this book desperately needs an editor. There are embarrassing grammatical errors, missing quotation marks, a weird mix of British and American English... It's distracting.

The premise is interesting, the characters almost engaging (the dialog kills it) and so there was a lot of potential here. But the dialog was too stilted -- more often just there to explain things, while the non-dialog text also explained things (show, don't tell?). New technologies, alien species, pieces of history etc are just thrown at the reader when they become relevant.

A longer book with well-written world building and, um, interesting dialog that enhances the characters and differentiates them would have been better.

And then... The ending. Cliffhanger doesn't begin to describe it. You're just reading along, and the book -- stops. I had to double check that it was really the last page.

I expected more due to the few-yet-glowing reviews here. Friends of the author? I dunno. As much as I hate not knowing things, I'll leave the fates of Aria, Liam, Jonah and Nora to my imagination. No book 2 for me.