The Center of the Universe Review

Title: The Center of the Universe

Author: Ria Voros

Genre: Young Adult, Contemporary

Trigger Warning: Kidnapping, Missing Persons

Rating: 4 stars

Release Date: April 2, 2019

Synopsis

Grace Carter's mother --- the celebrity news anchor GG Carter --- is everything Grace is not. GG is a star, with a flawless wardrobe and a following of thousands, while Grace --- an aspiring astrophysicist --- is into stars of another kind. She and her mother have always been in different orbits. Then one day GG is just … gone. Cameras descend on their house, news shows speculate about what might have happened and Grace's family struggles to find a new rhythm as they wait for answers. While the authorities unravel the mystery behind GG's disappearance, Grace grows closer to her high school's golden boy, Mylo, who has faced a black hole of his own. She also uncovers some secrets from her mother's long-lost past. The more Grace learns, the more she wonders. Did she ever really know her mother? Was GG abducted … or did she leave? And if she left, why? Author Ria Voros (Nobody's Dog, The Opposite of Geek) reaches for the stars here, deftly combining mystery with a passion for science and themes of mother-daughter bonds, celebrity, first love and best friendship. Facts about astronomy and astrophysics are seamlessly woven into the story and are supplemented by an interview with real-life astrophysicist Elizabeth Tasker, making this the perfect book for readers who love STEM. And even readers who don't have stars in their eyes will love this smart, suspenseful, relatable and literary novel.

Review

A special thank you to Netgalley and Kids Can Press for providing a free advance digital copy in exchange for an honest review.

This book follows Grace concerning her mother's disappearance and all sorts of the aftermath. Grace is honestly such a relatable character, especially with all of her quirks and interests, particularly with the noticing patterns thing and her love of astronomy that no one understands. It's really fun to read about her and discover all of these little quirks and differences about her, particularly with how some of her talents overlap and apply in other areas than just discovering new exoplanets. She's also a teenager and very typical in some of those characteristic behaviors while being her own individual at the same time.

With the mystery of what happened, I thought it was really cool that I honestly did not know anything and was figuring it alongside the characters as to where GG is and what happened the day that she disappeared. The story wasn't actually about the reader solving the mystery, but I still found it very cool at the same time and I definitely enjoyed reading it. I was afraid that it was going to end up darker than the book seemed to be leading to but thankfully it wasn't. The subject is kind of dark but I feel like it was handled very well, telling a good story while also approaching these darker ideas.

My major problem comes with the pacing, which was just really inconsistent. I thought this book was going to be a dnf at first because the beginning is tediously slow and gets really off rhythm at other points throughout the rest of the book. I enjoyed the characters and the plot but it was just moving at wrong pace based on the events that were and were not occurring and it felt like it was taking forever to try to get through at the beginning.

This was a major issue, but there are plenty of reasons why this is a 4 star read instead of 3 stars. I really did relate to Grace and wanted to know what was going to happen next. Mylo was adorable as well and even his unflattering moments were well justified and really did make sense within these circumstances. All the astronomy stuff was really cool, stuff that I knew and had no idea about beforehand. The space was super cool.


Have you read any books with lots of science that isn't necessarily science fiction? I love books where I can gain more knowledge about something else.

Thanks for reading!
Alyssa