Hunt the Stars by Jessie Mihalik
Starlight’s Shadow #1
Science Fiction Romance
February 1, 2022, by Harper Voyager
ARC

Review by Angela

Y’all. Y’ALL. This author just gets better and better with each new release. I might have mentioned that my addiction of choice in these trying times is fantasy/science fiction romance and whoooboy, was I glad I picked Hunt the Stars up for review because it rocked my socks off.

This is the first book in the new Starlight’s Shadow series and features both enemies to lovers and found family tropes. Octavia Zarola is the Captain of the Starlight’s Shadow, she and her crew left the war behind and are now focusing their talents on bounty hunting. They don’t have a lot, and their ship could use some upgrades and actual parts to replace the duct tape keeping it together, but they have each other and that’s all that matters. That is until her sworn enemy, the powerful Valovian General Torran Fletcher shows up out of the blue and tries to hire them for a job to retrieve something important stolen from him.

Her first instinct is to tell him to go to hell, but after quite a bit of heated negotiating and a rather large down payment, she accepts the job… and he and his handpicked soldiers aboard her ship. They have 8 weeks to find…. whatever it is he is looking for. Hopefully, he’ll begin to trust her enough to actually tell her.

I enjoyed this book so much. Each of these characters, from main to supporting, was so well crafted, so competent, so integral to the plot and world-building. I was enthralled from the moment I read the first word. I absolutely loved this found family and how they quickly meshed from two different groups of people, once adversaries, into one big cohesive team. I will also admit to mentally pairing up the secondary characters in my head into what I hope are couples in future books. (Hint: I think there might be a polyam group in this series’ future and I AM HERE FOR IT.)

Torran and Tavi are up first though and let me tell you the chemistry and heated looks are to die for. This is exactly the kind of badass space general I needed in my life. And Tavia holds her own just fine with him. They go in hating each other after being on opposite sides of the war, to sharing leadership responsibilities, to respecting and liking each other. The fall into love is gradual and endearing. This is the kind of couple I root for the hardest.

They, of course, have something to locate and I won’t get too much into the plot, but suffice it to say it’s way more complicated than Tavi and her crew expected it to be. Their old foe who betrayed them from their own government might be in on a plan to restart the old war and they can not let that happen. I have a feeling this will be a plot arc that runs through the entire series and is sure to only get more intricate and exciting.

Hunt the Stars is a gem of a space adventure and I can not wait to get my hands on book two. Highly recommend.

(Did I mention there is a fuzzy, always hungry, telepathic catlike pet that is sure to win your heart?)

Final grade- A

Amazon * iBooks * Goodreads