Teen Review: On A Sunbeam

Mia goes through the cosmos on a fish-like space ship in her effort to re-unite with her once girlfriend, Grace, who has been forced back home to the secluded planet known as the Staircase. Through her trip there she joins a strange makeshift family that all seem to have secrets. Until the very end the question in the air is “can I fix this?”. 

The strength of he novel is the excellence of balance between characters narratively, the way the book largely relies on showing rather than telling, and every character in the cast shows hidden depths. The main weakness of this book is how sometimes I’m unable to differentiate between the characters because of the more simplistic art style and simple colour palette. The art style and colour palette are both great but it interrupts the storytelling for me to squint at the page. 

I really liked the spaceships, they’re so unique and I found them kinda adorable. I also liked the book's ability to let the characters sit in silence and allow the feeling to sink in. If you’re looking for a largely character driven strange or unique space sci-fi, this book is something I would recommend. 

I would give this book a four out of five stars because while this is a good book I feel it doesn’t stick out too much to me out of the books I read. I enjoyed this book but I don’t think I’m going to read it again or anything.