Immediately, he sets out to find Joy (whom the authorities will target for her ability to communicate with and locate him) and escape to a place he can set about proving his innocence. Felix learns about the assassination just before realizing he’s the number one suspect. The storytelling smoothed out a lot from there, too. More than anything, Joy wanted to be seen and valued. She’s a bright, determined girl raised on a planet where women’s primary worth comes from their ability to bear children.

In the second chapter, we meet Joy, who is joined to Felix as his Kindred, and shares a connection to him through her mind. By the end of the first chapter, I wasn’t sure about the book. Like, it outlined Felix’s connection with the ruling Qadin family, but at that point, I wasn’t sure what exactly that meant. I felt like there was a LOT of worldbuilding that kind of got squeezed into a busy scene, and I didn’t always feel like I understood the connections. The first chapter was a bit rough for me. I really enjoyed Alechia Dow’s debut, THE SOUND OF STARS, so I was really excited about reading this book. But hiding might just be the perfect way to discover the true strength of the Kindred bond and expose a scandal-and a love-that may decide the future of a galaxy. Meeting in person for the first time as they steal a spacecraft and flee amid chaos might not be ideal…and neither is crash-landing on the strange backward planet called Earth. Someone will stop at nothing until he’s dead, which means they’ll target Joy, too.

Then the royal family is assassinated, putting Felix next in line for the throne…and accused of the murders. He will exasperate his noble family to the point that they agree to let him choose his own future and finally meet his Kindred face-to-face. A commoner from the lowly planet Hali, she lives a simple life-apart from the notoriety that being Kindred to the nobility’s most infamous playboy brings.ĭuke Felix Hamdi has a plan. To save a galactic kingdom from revolution, Kindred mind-pairings were created to ensure each and every person would be seen and heard, no matter how rich or poor… Published JanuAmazon | Bookshop | Goodreads About The Kindred

Alechia dow the kindred