Stray - Andrea K. Höst

Title: Stray (Touchstone #1)
Author: Andrea K. Höst
Genre: Sci-fi
Rating: 4.5/5
# pages: 273
Date read: October 2015, March 2017, March 2019, February 2021, September 2023

On her last day of high school, Cassandra Devlin walked out of exams and into a forest. Surrounded by the wrong sort of trees, and animals never featured in any nature documentary, Cass is only sure of one thing: alone, she will be lucky to survive.

The sprawl of abandoned blockish buildings Cass discovers offers her only more puzzles. Where are the people? What is the intoxicating mist which drifts off the buildings in the moonlight? And why does she feel like she's being watched?

Increasingly unnerved, Cass is overjoyed at the arrival of the formidable Setari. Whisked to a world as technologically advanced as the first was primitive, where nanotech computers are grown inside people's skulls, and few have any interest in venturing outside the enormous whitestone cities, Cass finds herself processed as a 'stray', a refugee displaced by the gates torn between worlds. Struggling with an unfamiliar language and culture, she must adapt to virtual classrooms, friends who can teleport, and the ingrained attitude that strays are backward and slow.

Can Cass ever find her way home? And after the people of her new world discover her unexpected value, will they be willing to let her leave?


I've wanted to read this for ages - pretty much ever since I read and loved "And All The Stars" which I picked up 3 years ago.

Fortunately it completely lived up to my expectations. I loved the world building and how the entire universe was set up. I adored reading about Cass' struggles with learning the language, and even found myself thinking in her disjointed sentences at times. I enjoyed seeing the friendships grow despite Cass being a 'Stray' and was totally fascinated by her coping mechanisms.

It's the first book in a series, so there's no real resolution. On the other hand, there's no real cliff-hanger either, so I thought the book nicely contained, even if the main arc wasn't resolved.

But still - with a 4.5 star rating, you can bet I logged on to Amazon right away to get hold of the rest of the series!

S. - J.J. Abrams & Doug Dorst

Title: S.
Author: J.J. Abrams & Doug Dorst
Genre: Epistolary
Rating: 4.5/5
# pages: 456
Date read: October, 2015

One book. Two readers. A world of mystery, menace, and desire.

A young woman picks up a book left behind by a stranger. Inside it are his margin notes, which reveal a reader entranced by the story and by its mysterious author. She responds with notes of her own, leaving the book for the stranger, and so begins an unlikely conversation that plunges them both into the unknown.

THE BOOK: Ship of Theseus, the final novel by a prolific but enigmatic writer named V. M. Straka, in which a man with no past is shanghaied onto a strange ship with a monstrous crew and launched onto a disorienting and perilous journey.

THE WRITER: Straka, the incendiary and secretive subject of one of the world's greatest mysteries, a revolutionary about whom the world knows nothing apart from the words he wrote and the rumours that swirl around him.

THE READERS: Jennifer and Eric, a college senior and a disgraced grad student, both facing crucial decisions about who they are, who they might become, and how much they're willing to trust another person with their passions, hurts, and fears.


I don't usually post photos in my reviews, but the charm of this book is best explained via visual aids.


The minute I saw this book, I knew I had to have it. I adore books that play with the media ("Lost in a Good Book" and "The City of Dreaming Books" spring to mind as other books that do this really well), so when I realized that half the plot in this book was told via the book "Ship of Theseus" and the other half was told through comments in the margin of said book as well as clippings, photos etc. inserted throughout the book - I was sold. What an altogether brilliant idea! I almost didn't care about the plot itself.

And the book didn't disappoint. I loved getting to know Eric and Jen through the comments in the margin - trying to figure out the timeline as they jumped back and forth to have conversations and follow up on things. I cared less about the story of SOT, but I don't think we were really supposed to, as it was mostly a means to an end. The main problem with the book - and the only reason it didn't make a straight 5 star rating - is that it was almost too realistic in Eric and Jen's way of communicating, so some things were just implied or understood, as they were referring to events they obviously both knew the outcome of. This also made the ending slightly abrupt, and left me with a few unanswered questions.

Nothing major though, and at the end of the day, the charm of the book won through. Definitely the most unusual book I have ever read.