This post contains affiliate links.
Title: Star Daughter
Author: Shveta Thakrar
Sub-genre: Fantasy
After a lot of romance reads in a row, I had a little bit of a hard time making my way through Star Daughter, but I think this one is still a worthwhile read.
Sheetal is a seventeen year old half star, half human. Since she lives on Earth with her father, she has to keep her star side hidden, dyeing her shimmery silver hair and keeping her star inspired singing talent under wraps. Sheetal is happy living with her dad, even though she misses her mother who abandoned her to go back to living in the sky, but she is also starting to feel the pull of her star heritage. When her father has a heart attack and Sheetal needs a way to save him, she travels up to the sky to try to convince her mother to provide her dad with a drop of healing blood. Sheetal arrives in the sky with her best friend and is informed by her grandparents that she can only have a drop of healing blood to save her father if she wins them an upcoming talent competition, which would put her family back in the position of rulers over the star kingdom. Sheetal doesn’t really want to compete, and she has definite doubts about embracing the star side of her, but she will do anything to save her dad. Animosity from the other competitors, plus an unexpected visitor threaten to ruin the competition before it even starts, but Sheetal is determined to find a way to come out on top.
Alright, so there were some really great parts of this book. I loved the concept, and the setting of being among the stars. The details and world-building were really enchanting and I was definitely swept away by a lot of the imagery. Sheetal is a great heroine. She’s tough and determined and knows what she wants. She was a fun character to root for and I enjoyed her story. The biggest drawback for me was the pacing of the book. It felt about a hundred pages too long (it clocks in at 435 pages), and a lot of the middle section really seemed to drag without anything major happening. I would have liked to see the pacing tightened up so that the moments of tension really zinged. Instead for me, by the time I got to the end, I was kind of ready to be done. It was a good read, but not a great one.
Overall Rating: 4 stars