From the TBR Pile: Blog Tour: Review of Chilling Effect by Valerie Valdes

Author: Valerie Valdes

Publisher: Harper Voyager

Date of publication: September 2019

A hilarious, offbeat debut space opera that skewers everything from pop culture to video games and features an irresistible foul-mouthed captain and her motley crew, strange life forms, exciting twists, and a galaxy full of fun and adventure.

Captain Eva Innocente and the crew of La Sirena Negra cruise the galaxy delivering small cargo for even smaller profits. When her sister Mari is kidnapped by The Fridge, a shadowy syndicate that holds people hostage in cryostasis, Eva must undergo a series of unpleasant, dangerous missions to pay the ransom.

But Eva may lose her mind before she can raise the money. The ship’s hold is full of psychic cats, an amorous fish-faced emperor wants her dead after she rejects his advances, and her sweet engineer is giving her a pesky case of feelings. The worse things get, the more she lies, raising suspicions and testing her loyalty to her found family.

To free her sister, Eva will risk everything: her crew, her ship, and the life she’s built on the ashes of her past misdeeds. But when the dominoes start to fall and she finds the real threat is greater than she imagined, she must decide whether to play it cool or burn it all down.

I'm definitely in the minority when I say I didn't enjoy this book. In the end, I think I wasn't the right audience for it. I think that maybe Space Opera genre is just not for me. I loved the concept of this story. However, it didn't deliver. It felt to me like I had walked into the middle of a movie and couldn't orient myself to what was going on. I had to look to see if there was a book that came out before this one. There was a distinct lack of world building. I also didn't care for the passages that were in Spanish. I know this is an own voices story, however, for non Spanish speaking readers like me, I felt like I was missing out on dialogue. Like I said, I'm just not the right audience for this book. So take my review with a grain of salt and give it a try.

Purchase Links

HarperCollins | Amazon | Barnes & Noble

About Valerie Valdes

Valerie Valdes’s work has been published in Nightmare Magazine, Uncanny Magazine, and the anthologies She Walks in Shadows, and Time Travel Short Stories. She is a graduate of the Viable Paradise workshop and lives in Miami, Florida with her husband and children.

Find out more about Valerie at her blog, and follow her on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram.

Instagram Features

Tuesday, September 17th: Instagram: @anovelescape

Wednesday, September 18th: Instagram: @createexploreread

Thursday, September 19th: Instagram: @storied.adventures

Friday, September 20th: Instagram: @dropandgivemenerdy

Saturday, September 21st: Instagram: @amberafterglowreads

Tuesday, September 24th: Instagram: @theliterarybirds

Wednesday, September 25th: Instagram: @oddandbookish

TBD: Instagram: @sarahandherbookshelves

TBD: Monday, September 23rd: Instagram: @_ebl_inc_