Gemina by Amie Kaufman and Jay Kristoff

Summary on Goodreads:

Moving to a space station at the edge of the galaxy was always going to be the death of Hanna’s social life. Nobody said it might actually get her killed.

The sci-fi saga that began with the breakout bestseller Illuminae continues on board the Jump Station Heimdall, where two new characters will confront the next wave of the BeiTech assault.

Hanna is the station captain’s pampered daughter; Nik the reluctant member of a notorious crime family. But while the pair are struggling with the realities of life aboard the galaxy's most boring space station, little do they know that Kady Grant and the Hypatia are headed right toward Heimdall, carrying news of the Kerenza invasion.

When an elite BeiTech strike team invades the station, Hanna and Nik are thrown together to defend their home. But alien predators are picking off the station residents one by one, and a malfunction in the station's wormhole means the space-time continuum might be ripped in two before dinner. Soon Hanna and Nik aren’t just fighting for their own survival; the fate of everyone on the Hypatia—and possibly the known universe—is in their hands.

But relax. They've totally got this. They hope.

Once again told through a compelling dossier of emails, IMs, classified files, transcripts, and schematics, Gemina raises the stakes of the Illuminae Files, hurling readers into an enthralling new story that will leave them breathless.

Review:

So, I got this ARC a bit early. I won it at a YA trivia night at Barnes and Noble. I could not believe my luck. This is probably one of my most anticipated books of the year. Then, I tried to play the game of not reading it until closer to the publication date…I knew I’d lose that game. So, I mad a compromise. I was not going to read this one until after I read the new Harry Potter book. So, that at least gave me until August.

Then of course, I plowed through this at the speed of light. It moves incredibly fast, much like Illuminae. Was it all that I was hoping it would be? Yes and no. The book was again made up of emails, security footage, and instant messages, which was awesome. Again, there were some totally amazing main characters. There was definite interaction with characters from Illuminae (I’m not spoiling this because the authors hinted at this already). The plot was action packed and full of crazy twists. There was never a good moment to put the book down.

I guess the one thing I did not like was how familiar I was with it all. I was hoping for the story to branch a little further away from the plot of book 1. It was almost too similar for me. It was kind of the same story, but with different characters. And because of these similarities, the giant twists of crazy weren’t as surprising as they ordinarily would have been. I would just tell myself what happened in Illuminae and calm down. When characters you like die (and there is tons of death here –tons), you’re never given enough time to grieve them, so you are always second guessing if they are actually dead or not. I don’t want to get in the details of the similarities in plot because then I would be spoiling, but there were enough of them that I kind of wish this story was a little different.

That being said, I did love the action, the drama, the twists and turns, and the characters. I super loved the ending. Wow. Just wow to that end. It was nuts. That part did surprise me a bit. It was probably one of my favorite YA book endings of all time. Seriously, it’s making my rating increase. I give this an 8/10.