3.5 stars 
 Illuminae follows the story of two teens, Kady and Ezra, who recently broke up only to find themselves in the middle of a space race against the clock to outrun a ship trying to kill them and the people of their home planet Kerenza. 
 I didn't know what to expect getting into Illuminae. I knew the book was gorgeous, probably one of the most aesthetically beautiful books I've ever owned. (Shout out to BookCon for this sUpEr PrEtTy book!) I also knew it was comprised of hacked documents, IMs, emails, and other graphics. I was intrigued, but not sure if I wanted to start reading for several reasons. The first being that IT IS HUGE. It's like 600 pages of space adventure. That's a lot of pages. The second reason was that it is a book set in space which is not one of my favorite types of stories to read. And thirdly, after looking up reviews on this book it seemed like a lot of people found it confusing or difficult to explain. 
 Now onto my review... I found Illuminae to be a really interesting read. The first half of the book was a little hard to follow due to the space and science jargon and the fact that a lot of it was set up like official government briefs. As I continued reading, I got sucked into the story. Not only does it feature an overarching villain in the form of the Lincoln ship and BeiTech, but it also features a deadly virus outbreak and a rouge artificial intelligence tech. The zombie-like virus outbreak and AI were my favorite parts of the book. I thought they were the most thrilling and exciting. I also thought Jimmy McNulty's storyline was great and very moving. 
 While I enjoyed the story, I did think that there could have been some things included to make it a little easier to connect to it. Because it's not written like a typical book and is instead full of hacked documents, it does put up a bit of a barrier between the reader and the book. For instance, you didn't really learn about what the characters looked like until halfway through the book. There was also a lot of different character names mentioned quickly and it was confusing to figure out who was doing what at any given time. Halfway through the book there started to be more video logs written out and narration from AIDEN, the artificial intelligence technology, which made it easier to follow the story. I will say that a pet peeve of mine is when authors repeat phrases. This happened a few times in the second half of the book where the word "illuminate/illuminating/illumination/etc" and the phrase "when the light that kisses the back of her eyes was birthed" (WHAT DOES THIS MEAN??) was used several times. I also think the twist (view spoiler)[where it looks like Ezra is dead and it turns out he really wasn't (hide spoiler)] was pretty genius. I figured it might happen since this is a series, but I was getting worried that maybe they'd figure out some other way to continue the story. I'd say the first half of the book was a solid 3 stars for me, but the second half really got me hooked and bumped my rating up to 3.5 stars. I thought Kady was a brave, kick-ass female character and I really liked how resilient she was and unwilling to give up. I also liked the twist at the very end which set up what we can expect in the next book. 
 Whether you like stories about space or not, I would recommend giving this book a try. It's uniquely written and set up in a way that is truly an experience to read. I will definitely be checking out the sequel when it comes out in the future. 
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