Red-Haired Ash Reads

Tamzir Jaarn, aka Seeker, has been paying the price for risking an illicit holiday on an forbidden planet. His ride off world never showed up and now he has been stranded on Earth for a year. But when he meets some cool humans online and is invited to the biggest space-themed convention, he decides to take the chance and go, especially since Jennette will be there. 

This was a bit of a cozy, cute, and nerdy sci-fi romance. We have a group of online friends who are obsessed with aliens finally getting to meet for the first time at a convention. This was very relatable as a cosplayer myself who has met many online friends at conventions. I really enjoyed the friendship between these six friends and how supportive they were, especially after finding out aliens exist. 

Tam was an alien who sought adventure to get away from disappointed parents and ended up on Earth. He is struggling but finds solace in the group chat, specifically with Jeneticist, aka Jennette. I really liked Tam. He was sweet, kind, and lonely. He really just wanted to be accepted for enjoying mechanical things, and he found that on Earth. His culture and alien differences were fascinating and I loved the brief glimpses we got of what an alien world looked like.

Jennette is a woman who dreamed of being an astronomer but settled for teaching it instead. She has really been accepted by friends or family until she finds this group of friends. I really liked that she didn’t really panic about finding out about aliens, and quickly jumped in to help Tam survive better. While I liked Jennette, I did think she gave her family way too much leeway in her life but was glad to see that she cut them out after their toxic words. 

The romance between these two is very slow building. Its friends to lovers but with Jennette being grayace, it makes it a bit slower. I was glad to see grayace representation that actually focused more on the emotional side of the relationship instead of the physical. I enjoyed their relationship but it did make the story a bit slow, especially with everything else going on in this story. 

White I enjoyed this story, the pacing is slow because it spends a lot of time on non-relationship things like getting to know all the friends, the convention, and on the daily life of the main characters. I enjoyed getting to know the other characters, but I could have done with less of the filler scenes that didn’t really add much to the story or romance. 

Overall, while the pacing is slow I still enjoyed this. I would be interested in reading more if she writes about their friends. 

TW: toxic family; sexual harassment; death of a parent from cancer mentioned; death of friend in car crash mentioned; 

*ARC provided by Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.*

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