Do You Dream Of Terra-Two? by Temi Oh

It’s been a long time since i’ve sat down and written a review for anything, so in some ways i definitely feel a little rusty. Recently i co-read Do You Dream Of Terra-Two? by Temi Oh with my boyfriend who is big in to space books, and it’s been on my TBR since YALC 2019, so i grabbed him a copy and sat down to read.

It took me a little while to get through Do You Dream of Terra-Two?, the first couple of chapters didn’t sit completely well with me, and honestly i didn’t start to gel with the characters until closer to the second half of the book.

I really enjoy space books in general, but more space books that have little action. I enjoy when things are going on and the dramatics of danger in space, but what i don’t enjoy is space war etc. Terra-Two is the perfect mix of a little bit of drama with general living your life aboard a space station. Six young adults are trained for years at an academy and sent to space to settle on Terra-Two, what could be the answer to all earths problems. They are accompanied by four trained professionals who are supposed to train these young adults to complete the twenty year journey to Terra-Two.

Naturally, throwing six twenty-something year olds on to a space station will lead to a little bit of foolishness and some MOMENTS. I enjoyed the aspects where the characters were getting to know each other a little more, and that for me seemed to happen in the second half of the book. The first half seemed to be filled with quite a lot of competition and you didn’t completely get the characters personalities from that. I definitely developed a love for some characters other others. Juno and Jesse quickly became my favourite people on the ship, and i think towards the end we got a lot more character from the older crew members, which was interesting.

Whereas the thing that sort of put me off Terra-Two was the slow start, the one thing i really didn’t enjoy was that at some point there was a lot of showing that each of the characters was unhappy. This was done in different ways but could easily be triggering. There are depression, hallucinations and eating disorder triggers in this book, and in my opinion they weren’t treated with the most care they could have been. Some felt like a plot to get to another place in the story, and for me, it just didn’t work and wasn’t worth adding in.

For the bits i didn’t enjoy, there were plenty of things i found wonderful about this book. The pace, the character development, the occasional cheesy line and moment was wonderful. It’s truly the perfect space book for me, a lot of not very much going on with some technical space chat.

I’d be very interested in reading what Temi Oh releases next, i definitely think this story is a force and i cannot wait to see what they put in to other stories.