Cat Sebastian’s Star Shipped is Out-Of-This-World Good
Star Shipped is Cat Sebastian’s first contemporary romance novel, and it’s everything we love about a Sebastian release: laugh-out-loud funny with moments of tenderness that are so endearing that the reader falls in love, too.
Simon and Charlie costar in a long-running Sci-Fi TV series, Out There, where they have been at odds with each other for seven seasons. Where Simon is polished and refined, Charlie is chaotic. Where some might interpret Simon as cold, Charlie wears his heart on his sleeve. This would be opposites attract if they didn’t hate each other – or at least, deeply, deeply irritate one another. When Simon announces that he’s leaving at the end of the season, he expects that Charlie will feel nothing but relief.
Of course, it’s not that simple: Simon and Charlie have worked side-by-side for nearly a decade. They can deeply irritate each other because they know each other so well. Even in the earliest chapters, Charlie offers Simon rides home without his asking because Simon is feeling sick. They know what they need from one another. There is an undercurrent of electricity between them that makes their connection flow, despite their reluctance to admit it to themselves.
In our interview with Sebastian, she mentioned that she wrote moments of tenderness between “two characters who had a hard time being earnest for more than ten seconds at a time.” In these moments of earnestness, Sebastian packs an enormous punch where the reader finds two imperfect people clumsily learning how to give and receive love from one another.
Star Shipped is striking in how it depicts love. It asks the reader to contend with the messy, contradictory nature of wanting to be known with the urge to hide any time someone comes close. It is also compelling in its mental and physical disability representation. Simon suffers from debilitating migraines and OCD, for which he carries a great amount of shame. A lot of his perceived rudeness is simply a reaction to being overwhelmed, and as he comes to accept these truths about himself, he allows himself to take up more space. Similarly, Charlie struggles with emotional regulation and rejection wounds, stemming from a less-than-ideal childhood. Their love requires patience. It requires candid conversations about boundaries and triggers and abandonment. Sebastian shines in this area. The story glistens with the kind of visceral vulnerability and tenderness that makes her work singular.
I recommend Star Shipped to anyone who wants a romance rife with tension and rich with emotion. It is a long, strange trip to a happy ending, but it sure is a good one.
