Rating: 8/10
To my surprise, I actually really enjoyed Alienated, more so than I thought I would. The story itself is quite original, and definitely a version of an alien story that I haven’t heard yet. Instead of the typical OMG are you an alien? story that YA often delivers, in this series, the L’Eihrs have already made contact with Earth two years ago, and are now seeking to establish an official alliance between the two species (races? people?)
Cara Sweeney is chosen
to participate in an alien exchange program and is teamed with the task of
strengthening ties between the humans and the L’Eihrs by parading around this hot,
young alien exchange student (I mean, have you ever heard of an alien
exchange program in any book?! I certainly haven’t!) At first, I was worried
that this book was going to be chock-full of tropes and boring plotlines, but I
was pleasantly surprised.
The L’Eihrs had a very
interesting backstory about their race and history, which I thought was, at least
to my knowledge and understanding of things, relatively well-explained and was
integrated enough into scientific understanding that it seemed believable. Melissa
Landers has also crafted a rather rich culture of the L’Eihrs, which I am
honestly very excited to explore further in the following books.
The romance between
Cara and Aelyx was actually quite sweet, and although it followed a slightly tropey
pattern of him not liking her first and then falling for her, I never found
myself bored with their relationship. For example, Cara attempting to find an Earth
food that Aelyx would enjoy was incredibly endearing.
This book also does
deal with certain deeper topics, such as xenophobia and an “us versus them”
mentality that I am also interested in seeing further elaborated on in its
sequels.
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