Good morning book nerds! I hope you’re having a lovely morning. Today, I am super duper excited for my blog tour stop for The Sound of Stars by Alechia Dow. I absolutely squealed with excitement when I found out that I was included on this tour with The Fantastic Flying Book Club. Due to an important email landing in my spam folder, I actually didn’t get to start reading the book until Monday, but that’s not going to keep me from posting! Today, you’ll get my “Creative Post” for the tour, but rest assured, a full review is coming probably later this week.
Thank you to the publisher, author, and the (Amazing) Fantastic Flying Book Club for including me on this tour and sending me an e-arc for review!
About the Book
Can a girl who risks her life for books and an alien who loves forbidden pop music work together to save humanity?
Two years ago, a misunderstanding between the leaders of Earth and the invading Ilori resulted in the deaths of one-third of the world’s population.
Seventeen-year-old Janelle “Ellie” Baker survives in an Ilori-controlled center in New York City. Deemed dangerously volatile because of their initial reaction to the invasion, humanity’s emotional transgressions are now grounds for execution. All art, books and creative expression are illegal, but Ellie breaks the rules by keeping a secret library. When a book goes missing, Ellie is terrified that the Ilori will track it back to her and kill her.
Born in a lab, M0Rr1S (Morris) was raised to be emotionless. When he finds Ellie’s illegal library, he’s duty-bound to deliver her for execution. The trouble is, he finds himself drawn to human music and in desperate need of more. They’re both breaking the rules for love of art—and Ellie inspires the same feelings in him that music does.
Ellie’s—and humanity’s—fate rests in the hands of an alien she should fear. M0Rr1S has a lot of secrets, but also a potential solution—thousands of miles away. The two embark on a wild and dangerous road trip with a bag of books and their favorite albums, all the while making a story and a song of their own that just might save them both.
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About the Author
Alechia Dow is a former pastry chef, food critic, culinary teacher, and Youth Services librarian. When not writing about determined black girls (like herself), you can find her chasing her wild child, baking, or taking teeny adventures around Europe.
Book Cover Review
I’ll include another copy of the book cover down here so that you can reference it in all of its pretty sci-fi glory.
So, if this is your first time on my blog, you might not know that I’m absolutely obsessed with book covers. I’m hoping to be an art director or book cover designer in the future, so whenever I see book covers that I love, I simply have to identify why I love them, hence these reviews!
I think that the two most striking things about the cover for The Sound of Stars is the color palette and the really cool stylized typography! While the color is fairly simple, I think that those two design choices are what help it scream it’s genre loud and clear: YA Scifi.
The typography was the very first thing I noticed when I saw this book on Netgalley months ago. The text almost glows against the swirling colors behind it, making it really pop. The way that the sans serif letterforms connect with lines (especially between the T and U, the N and F, and the T and A) both work to connect the text together and lead the reader’s eye through the piece, as well as conveying a more “sci-fi”-esque feel. That, coupled with the little dots and lines on the text, makes me believe that a lot of thought and effort went into the typography for this cover, and that this wasn’t just a typeface that the designer found online. It was likely hand designed with this cover in mind.
Next, I want to touch on the color palette. For me, the color palette is what makes this book so striking and gives it the feeling it does. I was trying to reimagine it in any other color palette, but none of them felt right. The colors used here both give me major scifi vibes, but also hints at the soft romance that we’ll get later. It doesn’t scream hard scifi at all, which I normally associate with cool colors. Even the blue used here is on the warmer side of things.
All in all, I absolutely adore this cover. I like that it doesn’t scream scifi as overtly as some covers, but at the same time, it does. Major respect to the creative team behind this cover!
Giveaway
Follow the link below for your chance to win! (because my stupid blog won’t let me embed the rafflecopter for some reason!!!)
- 1 copy of THE SOUND OF STARS by Alechia Dow
- US Only
http://www.rafflecopter.com/rafl/display/d9681b86462/?
Thanks again for checking out my tour stop! Be sure to check out the rest of the tour schedule for interviews, guest posts, reviews, and more! Give this book and the author the love it deserves!
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