The Stars Never Rise Review

The Stars Never Rise by Rachel Vincent
Series: The Stars Never Rise #1
Published by Random House Children's Books on June 9th 2015
Genres: Action & Adventure, Demons, Paranormal, Young Adult
Pages: 368
Format: Hardcover
Goodreads

From RACHEL VINCENT, New York Times bestselling author, comes the first book in a new series about a girl who must join forces with rogue exorcists to save her sister and, ultimately, humanity. Sixteen-year-old Nina Kane should be worrying about her immortal soul, but she’s too busy trying to actually survive. Her town’s population has been decimated by soul-consuming demons, and souls are in short supply. Watching over her younger sister, Mellie, and scraping together food and money are all that matters. The two of them are a family. They gave up on their deadbeat mom a long time ago. When Nina discovers that Mellie is keeping a secret that threatens their very existence, she’ll do anything to protect her. Because in New Temperance, sins are prosecuted as crimes by the brutal Church and its army of black-robed exorcists. And Mellie’s sin has put her in serious trouble. To keep them both alive, Nina will need to put her trust in Finn, a fugitive with deep green eyes who has already saved her life once and who might just be an exorcist. But what kind of exorcist wears a hoodie? Wanted by the Church and hunted by dark forces, Nina knows she can’t survive on her own. She needs Finn and his group of rogue friends just as much as they need her.

 Julie’s Review:

You know how much I love this author (I even mention her in our author crush post). So then you know how excited I was to read her recent release. The premise for The Stars Never Rise is quite exciting; I mean, I eat up stories about demons and exorcists (or slayers, or hunters, or whatever you want to call them in other similar universes). But one of the things I loved about her previous works (Soul Screamers and Shifters are among my absolute favorite series) is that pretty much each book in the series had a unique conflict and resolution, while building on the overall story arc for the series. If you’ve read a lot of my reviews, you know one of my peeves is a book that doesn’t do that. I’m all for first in a series books being used to set up the plot, build the world, and introduce characters BUT it has to do more than just that to keep my interest. So I’m slightly disappointed that I didn’t quite get what I was expecting from this book. The conflict in this book was more to introduce the bigger picture and to get the characters on their path.

Don’t get me wrong, the book is exciting and has some serious bombshells about the demons as well as some great action and chicks-kicking-butt. And if the bar wasn’t set so high by my adoration of her previous works, maybe I would have enjoyed this book more. I do have to say the characters are pretty cool. The demons are scary in their regular or degenerate states. I’m actually not a huge fan of the way the world was built, and am a bit turned off by the use of religion, with the Church being the governing body who controls the borders of each town, can sterilize teenagers they deem not worthy of procreation, and are in control of whether someone can procure a soul for a new baby. I don’t know who or what Finn is, but that green-eyed-boy is someone I want to get to know. Nina, our main character, just starts to come into her awesomeness in this book, so we know we can expect a lot more from her as the series progresses. So overall this was a good start to what might be an excellent series, but I just expected so much more that I was left a bit disappointed.

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