Liliana's Reviews > This World Is Not Yours

Reviewed on Lili Lost in a Book

This world is as brutal and unforgiving as it is beautiful.

In my neverending quest to find some good sci-fi horror, I came across this one. And I was so excited I stumbled upon it because right in the synopsis it compared it to the space horror novels by S.A. Barnes , novels that I have really enjoyed. However, I didn’t end up loving this novella as much as I thought I would.



I LOVED the concept of this novella though! People fighting for their lives on a planet that is fighting back?? That is just SO cool! But my problem with this book stems from the fact that the horror aspect of this sci-fi horror didn’t really start until about the 51% mark.



This book felt a lot more like a domestic drama and that is just NOT what I signed up for. I was wondering if this was my fault for thinking this book was something it wasn’t. But reading back the synopsis, no! I wish it would’ve clarified that the drama played a much bigger role in the novella than is actually mentioned. It was just disappointing because instead of the horror I was expecting, I got jealousy, pettiness, and just non-stop family drama. And the synopsis does mention jealousy and a toxic polycule, which is all well and good. But it’s NOT all well and good when that’s all I got in the first 50% of the freaking book!



And speaking of toxic relationships, good god did I dislike following Vinh and Amara. And the reason why is because we are told SO much that they love each other and this and that, and I just didn’t see it!! Why? Because we were told not shown. Amara may be a biologist, but she had no chemistry with her wife 😆



There was nothing but toxicity and hiding things from one another... it was wild! And their friend Jesse was... weird. I did not understand him or his intent with the girls AT ALL.

All that being said, I did not hate this book. I thought it was fine, if not a bit frustrating. The little horror we got was good, but there was a lot more that could’ve been done with it! There was so much potential there! I also loved the premise of the story and I really liked the concept of the Gray and how this planet was “self-cleansing.” All that was very interesting. But because of all the unexpected domestic drama, I was just kinda hoping the planet with get rid of all the humans by the end because they were annoying 😆