(TRUE) LOVE
(TOXIC) LOVE
(LOST) LOVE
This is a different kind of love story.
17-year-old Luka isn't looking for love. She's trying to piece her life back together after a heartbreaking loss. But when she meets the gorgeous and charismatic Cosmo under a meteor shower at the Greenwich Observatory, it feels like destiny has played a hand. Surely theirs is a love written in the stars.
But Cosmo isn't what he seems, using Luka's love for him to slowly take control of her life. As the pandemic starts to make headlines and lockdown sets in, she is trapped emotionally and physically in a coercive relationship. Luka's friends and brother can see what's happening, but struggle to reach her. Something will have to be sacrificed so Luka can set herself free - but what will be left of her when she does?
Luka's story is told from many points of view: through her letters, and through the voices of her brother, Alec, his boyfriend Theo and Luka's best friend, Roisin. Each of them holds a fragment of the story - it's time to put it all together.
Told in what's becoming Sera's signature style, with POV switching rapidly between different characters, this is a love story that very quickly becomes something else entirely. Although I enjoyed the story, I found it difficult to get to know anyone, as the POV switched so rapidly from one to another - sometimes within a couple of lines.
The story itself is hard to read in spots, as everyone is going through heartbreaking, difficult things. Apart from anything else, it's set at the beginning of the Covid pandemic in England and some of it goes through their first lockdown, including one character losing a family member to the illness. Although this may be offputting to some people, the last two years have been such a huge part of people's lives I think they have to be faced up to.
The main topic - coercive control in relationships - is one that's so important to talk about, because a lot of people have one image of it and don't realise that it can take a lot of different forms. We need to make sure that people know how to recognise it, what to do if they think a friend is caught up, how to act and how not to act. I didn't know the information about Boots given here, so it's great to get it out there.
Sera is establishing herself as a writer to watch, and I can't wait to see what else she writes.
Vile Stars is available now. I received a free copy and am giving an honest review.
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