Love Galaxy is part romance and part cozy murder mystery. Our Heroine is a young woman named Temmi (short for Artemis) who has rejected love for all the right reasons. Then a fateful encounter with the prince (Nicky, the sensible and socially anxious one) and princess (Spie, the problem child) of the Expan Empire lands her in the middle of a reality show/dating show called “Love Galaxy,” that has been going on for centuries, pairing up nobles and other VIPs for the sake of Diplomacy.
This year, the princess and prince are on the marital auction block, and there’s rather more politicking than a trash collector from a polluted mining colony can deal with. Our Heroine gets herself into and out of trouble, tries to solve murder mysteries that the producers of the show are trying super hard to keep quiet, and has a number of dates with both the prince and princess. (Which range from amusing, to second hand embarrassment, to genuinely romantic.)
The mystery plot point runs in and out of the romantic plot points without one bleeding into the other. This is sometimes a problem with mysteries that have romance in them. (Or romances with mysteries in them.) Both plotlines are interesting, engaging and full of suspense. With this story, the tension is wound pretty tight on both the mystery and romance. (One in the sense of “who is committing these murders?” and the other in the sense of “which one will pick Temmi or will they realize Temmi has two hands?”)
The novel goes into some unexpected directions, and has a twist I’m intrigued by, but am not convinced could be pulled off. (No I am not going to tell you what it was. You will find out when you read it.) This was an interesting book that starts out soft (well as soft as you can get when the protagonist has grown up on a planet where everyone has at least one lung disease because of mining a hazardous mineral) but goes extremely hard in the last few chapters. This is a very natural progression, and not something that comes out of nowhere, which is what I appreciated the most about this book.
This review is based on a galley copy received from NetGalley!
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