Stars and Smoke
Stars and Smoke (Stars and Smoke #1)
By: Marie Lu
“‘You may presume that you belong in the spotlight and I operate in a secret world, but perhaps we exist in the same place.’”
A pop star and a spy. Winter and Sydney. On a secret mission to stop a biochemical weapon from getting into terrorist hands. That’s the premise of this book.
Stars and Smoke.
A pretty good title!
This is a YA novel so both characters are 19 years old and good-looking. Another reviewer commented that they got tired of hearing how beautiful Winter was and I would have to agree. It got to be a bit much. And what’s weird is that I still can’t really picture what he looks like.
Let’s see…
”he was so beautiful it was hard to believe he was real.”
”she was surprised he wasn’t covered in moths all drawn to his light.”
”There was no one else here, and yet, even now, he looked like a star, like he couldn’t help but burn so bright that even the air was drawn to him, that the moon yearned to illuminate him.”
Marie Lu took pop star quite literally.
So as with most YA novels, the characters are young and beautiful, have amazing wisdom and skills, and obviously fall in love with each other.
Having read Lu’s Legend series and The Kingdom of Back, I wasn’t sure what to expect with this book. Stars and Smoke was different because it wasn’t really a world-building book. It took place in modern day London. There was some high-tech gadgetry but otherwise a normal world.
I still liked it.
I think what I enjoyed most was the action. I could see this being a rom-com-action-type movie. For some reason I just picture Simu Liu and Scarlett Johansson as Winter and Sydney so they would be older than teenagers but Simu can dance and Sydney is basically Black Widow.
I am a fan of the Mission Impossible movies, however ridiculous they end up being, so I didn’t really care of the aspects of the mission were realistic or not. It also almost felt like the action and the mission superseded the romance which I prefer.
For a YA novel, the characters weren’t too annoying, the dialogue was mostly realistic, and the action and suspense was really good. Plus it was a clean novel, virtually no swearing and no sex scenes (just one almost one…) so a book that would be appropriate for a teenage audience.
A slightly more detailed summary is this: Panacea, a secret organization often ‘employed’ by the CIA, recruits Winter, a pop star, to be an undercover spy for their mission because Winter has been invited as the special guest to the birthday party of an evil billionaire’s daughter. Winter is paired with the agent, Sydney, who will be his bodyguard.
Together they must use Winter’s access to the daughter to get evidence of the billionaire’s illicit activities so that the CIA can finally take him down before the chemical weapon, Paramecium, is in terrorist control.
The side plot lines are: of course, the romance between Winter and Sydney— forbidden because they live in two very different worlds; and Winter’s early-life-crisis where we feels like his existence is meaningless compared to his deceased brother who worked for the Peace Corp.
Winter finds out his brother was actually an agent with Panacea, not the Peace Corp, and so we see his grief journey with processing that and trying to follow in his footsteps and get the love of his mother back.
I didn’t realize this book was in a series. I’m not sure how I feel about that. It seems like a good standalone story and I’m not sure if the characters have what it takes to go the distance, but Marie Lu is a great author so maybe she’ll come up with something good.
Stars and Smoke doesn’t really end on a cliffhanger so you don’t have to read this one with a commitment to the entire future series which I also like. I have too many series I’m in the middle of…
I liked the name of the secret organization: Panacea. The word Panacea means ‘solution or remedy for all difficulties or diseases’ and is the name of the Greek goddess of universal remedy. I thought this was interesting to think about as both Winter and Sydney have difficulties— Winter, his grief over his brother and his estrangement with his mother; Sydney with a lung condition and the loss of her mom to the same disease— and especially considering this is a series, the role of Panacea in both of their lives may become a remedy for them in different ways.
One thing that was a little weird to me was that Winter was a male. In Tosca Lee’s book The Line Between—a really good book— the main character is Wynter and is a female. I’m not sure I felt like Winter fit his character, I think he should have had a different name.
Overall, for a YA book I really liked it! I think if it was marketed as a an adult book I would have wanted it to be a little different, but I think for what it was supposed to be Marie Lu did a really great job writing this.
And for this reason… I would recommend this book.
[Content Advisory: 0 f-words, 7 s-words; a couple characters are gay; heavy flirting but no sex scenes]
**Received an ARC via NetGalley**
This book just released March 28, 2023. You can order a copy of this book using my affiliate link below.
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