Girl Made of Stars by Ashley Herring Blake

This book will make you cry. It’s heavy and intense but worth it.

Mara’s whole world comes crashing down, when one of her best friends accuses her twin brother, of rape. Who does she believe? Her twin brother, who is her other half, or her friend?

I really liked Mara. Her character was really complicated and I loved seeing her grow. She suffers from horrible panic attacks, anxiety and PTSD. As the story goes on, you learn that she has also dealt with her own trauma. You get to see her start to find her voice. There’s a part at the end that just broke my heart. Not only is she trying to deal with the current situation, she’s trying to deal with the past.

She has recently broken up with her best friend turned girlfriend, Charlie. What I loved about this whole relationship, was how hard they tried to stay friends. They are both in love with each other, but want to still be best friends. It wasn’t really an ugly breakup but two people who are trying to find themselves. I loved Charlie. She’s a non-binary character, who is also having trouble letting her parents know, who she really is. Throughout it all though, she’s there for Hannah and Charlie. I loved that.

Mara talks about how her mom is a big feminist but we see her mom totally take her son’s side. She even puts her mom on the spot, pointing out that she says, we should always listen to the girl. Yet, her mom is quick to jump on her sons story and that’s it. Talk is so much easier than action, right? What about when it’s one of the people you love most in the world? It’s hard to even fathom that he’s lying.

I think that Blake did a wonderful job representing so many different diversities and her writing was just beautiful. I loved the representation of the stars throughout the book. I applaud her for taking on such a heavy topic and exploring rape culture. Make sure to read her notes at the end of the book.

Now what I didn’t like..

Alex. I feel like that whole love triangle-ish thing was just so random and didn’t really fit into the story. It just felt thrown in there and I think it took away from the story a bit.

At times, I felt like Blake was taking on too much in this book. It’s a decently short book and there was a lot going on. Not only the rape, the past trauma with Mara, Mara and Charlie’s breakup, Mara and Alex, Charlie trying to let her parents know who she is, Hannah and a lot of other things too. It felt like the focus of the story was lost at times.

Overall, this is a great book. I think that we could have had a whole book based on Mara and her past. I think it’s great that I’m seeing books talk about rape culture more and more. It’s something that needs to be talked about. The ending to this book is what happens in reality a lot more than it should.