Title: Earth to dad

Author: Krista Van Dolzer

Format: E-Arc (from NetGalley)

Publisher: Capstone

Page count: 322

Release day: 1 August 2018

Series: Standalone

Rating: 3 stars

What is it about?

11-year-old Jamesons dad is on Mars. Before his dad left they build a machine together with which they can communicate even when they are on different planets. So every day after school Jameson is checking his machine for messages from his dad.

A new family moves to Base Ripley, where Jameson lives as well, and he makes friends with the daughter of the family, Astra. Astra knows how it is to have a parent far away, her mom died on Mars.

At some point Jameson receives less messages from his father and together with Astra he tries to fix the system. Jameson learns there is way more to the story then he thought.

What I thought:

I had know idea what this book was about going into the story, I only expected it to be Middle Grade because of the cover. And I was pleasantly surprised by this book!

My main issue with this book is that the main character is 11, but if I was not told he was 11 I would have thought he was 15. And that is to big of a difference! It made parts a bit unbelievable, sometimes I was thinking ‘a 11-year-old can’t think/do this’ or I was thinking ‘this is too childish for a 15-year-old’. That made parts less enjoyable.

My other complaint is that there was some talk about computer stuff, which I did not really get, so maybe if I do not understand it a 9-12-year-old will also not?! Or maybe I just have no knowledge about computer stuff haha..

But those points aside, I really enjoyed the rest of the book! It was really fast-paced, made me want to continue the story! Also This book deals with some important topics, like grieve, loss, trust and it also tries to tell that it is import to listen to other people and their reason for doing things.

I did see the plot twist coming, but maybe younger readers won’t!

Recommend for:

Definitely younger readers, since I don’t think they will see the things that I did not enjoy.

Or otherwise for people who like some fast-paced easy read 🙂

Thanks to NetGalley for this e-arc, all opinions are my own!