Tear-soaked from the headlines

Book: The Promise of Stardust

Author: Priscille Sibley

Published: HarperCollins (2013--!)

Pages: 399

Here is what I was thinking once this book laid out its central premise and started “building”:

I put building in quotes because everything just spins in place while people pontificate their beliefs at each other.

SO MUCH MELODRAMA, Y’ALL. There’s a lady who watched her mom die slowly from a vegetative state so the lady makes it clear that she never ever wants to be put on life support herself. Cut to an accident that leaves her brain-dead…but she’s pregnant. So the lady’s husband fights to keep her alive long enough to deliver to baby to term because that’s what she would’ve wanted, dammit! Don’t make me speechify all the emotions I’ve ever had for her since we met when we were kids!

He’ll do it anyway. Hint to authors: making emotions louder makes them more ridiculous. If everyone starts lecturing everyone on (1) their fierce emotional bonds with the person in question and (2) exactly how strong that makes their emotional telepathy with the human being who is no longer human, then you smother the human that we’re supposed to care about under, like, legal bickering and overworked sentimentality.

And I so wanted to care about this lady, because she was an astronaut and a little scatterbrained and had trouble carrying pregnancies to term in the first place when she really wanted kids.

But SPOILER ALERT everything turns out okay in the end. I mean, she dies, but the kid comes out okay, and I did keep reading this every day at lunch to remind me of how awesome it is to work in a library and just have advanced reader’s copies lying around on breakroom tables (can I get an “Aw yeah”?).

And it gives me an excuse to get SUPER EXTRA NO SERIOUSLY SPOILER-Y ABOUT THE WALKING DEAD. GUYS, I’M ACTUALLY SPOILING SOMETHING CURRENT. LOOK AWAY IF YOU HAVE NOT YET EXPRESSED YOUR CARE FOR SUNDAY’S EPISODE BY WATCHING IT ON THE TELEVISION.

Okay. I’m done here.