Bookaholics book club: Earth girl

Earth girl by Janet Edwards
Earth girl book one.
Available 16th August 2012.
harpervoyagerbooks.com

What's it about?
2788. Only the handicapped live on Earth. While everyone else portals between worlds, 18-year-old Jarra is among the one in a thousand people born with an immune system that cannot survive on other planets. Sent to Earth at birth to save her life, she has been abandoned by her parents. She can’t travel to other worlds, but she can watch their vids, and she knows all the jokes they make. She’s an ‘ape’, a ‘throwback’, but this is one ape girl who won’t give in.

Jarra invents a fake background for herself – as a normal child of Military parents – and joins a class of norms that is on Earth to excavate the ruins of the old cities. When an ancient skyscraper collapses, burying another research team, Jarra’s role in their rescue puts her in the spotlight. No hiding at back of class now. To make life more complicated, she finds herself falling in love with one of her classmates – a norm from another planet. Somehow, she has to keep the deception going.

A freak solar storm strikes the atmosphere, and the class is ordered to portal off-world for safety – no problem for a real child of military parents, but fatal for Jarra. The storm is so bad that the crews of the orbiting solar arrays have to escape to planet below: the first landing from space in 600 years. And one is on collision course with their shelter.

My review

Being the space geek that I am, I knew I had to try this as soon as I heard of it, even though it's all set on Earth and they don't go into space at all because the lead character physically can't, lol.

I knew this sounded like my kind of book and I'm so glad I was right, it was a brilliant debut and I'm now dying for the rest of the trilogy!

Earth girl is set in a completely plausible future where a the portal has been invented that allows humans to planet hop in seconds, meaning they've colonised lots of other planets and hardly anyone lives on Earth anymore.

This was one of those books that I could tell from the first page I was going to love it, I loved Jarra straight away, she has a great no nonsense attitude and a sarcastic edge that I love in characters, probably because I'm highly sarcastic myself. She tells her story to me as if I live on one of the other planets - which are people she hates by the way - and even though sometimes she explains things to me like I'm stupid or ignorant, it just made me like her more, and it did set up the world beautifully and explained everything, I never got confused. I also loved Jarra's passion for history and how she never acted big headed despite knowing things the rest of her class don't. And of course I enjoyed following her journey, she starts off kind of immature and with a one sided view of the world, but it changes as she see's things from another perspective, and of course when she meets Fian who I also loved!

The stroy itself was also really interesting and stayed exciting, I was seriously hooked right the way through, I love the world and characters that the author has imagined and I had no trouble envisioning the scene myself. There were some parts that could've felt repetitive but the fabulous writing avoided this and kept the book fresh.

So, in conclusion, this book is a total keeper and I'll be grabbing myself a finished copy for my shelf when it's released and I'll be recommending all my friends do the same - that would be you! - I cannot wait for the next book in the series to see what else is in store for Jarra.

My thoughts on the cover

This cover is stunning, it has a great mix of colours and I love the girl standing off to the side overlooking it all, the whole of the backdrop is gorgeous.

Sorry, no favourite quotes as I read an uncorrected proof copy.