Earth girl

It was a little hard to get into this book, but I'm glad I stuck with it as I ended up enjoying it. I found the plot gripping and quite different from what I've read this past year. The world building was equally “zan”.

What I did not love was how incredibly flawed and annoying Jarra was. Yes, annoying, despite the fact that she was “amaz” at EVERYTHING.

On occasion, she was alright, and I could sympathize with her, but her self-deprecating and the constant use of the word “ape” made me cringe. The book would have been so much more enjoyable without that word screaming at me once at every few pages. Its usage was completely unnecessary. The opposition handicapped-norm provided plenty of conflict. It would've been more relatable if the off-world people frowned upon those with immunity deficiency just because they were stuck on Earth and they could never leave it and travel to the colonies, instead of despising them and calling them neanderthals and dumb apes that smell bad. Seriously, this part did not make any sense to me and I felt that it was used just to force the drama which was not even that obvious, except in Jarra's head. The way she saw the world in black and white was really frustrating. And she was pretty hypocritical too because she was constantly judging the “exos”.

Character development lost a lot of territory to world-building. The world building was great, but the characters were kind of neglected. Fian is a pansy, it's hard to understand why Jarra would fall for him. He doesn't grow at all throughout the book. Then Jarra never apologizes to the rest of the people for lying to them so blatantly. She also deals with the loss of her parents and her entire abandonment issues much too quickly. She loses her mind for a few weeks, then she just snaps out of it and she's cured? It doesn't really work that way!

She doesn't seem to mature at all by the end of the book. She is „Earth Girl” extraordinaire, she's talked about in the “newzzies” and nobody holds her lies against her. Not one soul. But, at the same time, she relishes the attention and can't be be bothered to do anything redeemable. But somehow, overall , this book was not that bad.