Hold Back the Stars

LoveReading Says

Beautifully written, this stunning, unusual debut weaves its way through an intense, all-encompassing first love.  A love forbidden by the times in which they live and yet one that they’ll risk everything not to lose.

Hold Back the Stars is set in a future where the world has been ravaged by war and a new society introduced. The earth is now peaceful but this comes at a price. There are rules and one of the rules is that you don’t fall in love until you reach the appropriate age.  Yet the heart rarely follows rules and when Carys and Max meet its ten years before either should be thinking of settling down.  They are young, rebellious and maybe the system no longer works for their generation.  

Throughout the novel Carys and Max are desperately trying to find a way to survive after their ship is damaged and they are stranded in space and rapidly running out of both air and options.  I loved discovering their relationship as Khan dips in and out of their past moving us towards the moment that brought them to be being in space and the catastrophic situation they find themselves in.  It is intense and Khan conjures up the sheer vastness of space and their desperation as they watch the minute’s tick away taking them closer to death.  Yes this is a novel about survival but ultimately it is a unique love story about how true love can turn our world upside down and also, maybe it can be the very thing that saves us too. ~ Shelley Fallows

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Reviewed by Shelley Fallows
I can still remember visiting the local library as a child.
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About Hold Back the Stars

'We're going to be fine.' He looks around, but there's nothing out here: nothing but the bottomless black universe on their left, the Earth suspended in glorious technicolour to their right. Carys and Max have ninety minutes of air left. None of this was supposed to happen.

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