Title: My Year as a SPACE Cadet

Publisher: Acornpress

Stars: ✨✨✨

Author: Hope Dalvay

Review:

I realized that My Year as a SPACE Cadet was a sequel as soon as I had received it in the mail. Whoops. Buuuuut, there was a lovely re-cap of the first book already there for me, so it’s perfect! I was able to read My Year as a SPACE Cadet without any trouble or confusion.

My Year as a SPACE Cadet… where to begin? This book was every bit just as I expected, but also not? I don’t know what to say… this was an interesting one. So, here are the reasons for why I’ve only rated it 3 stars.

The characters:

Page Stewart

I found Page as bland as an actual page. Well, not exactly, I just wanted to say that because it sounded fun XD. See, I’m told that she’s from Saudi Arabia. She grew up in Saudi Arabia, and that’s really the only home she’s even known. She’s moved to PEI pretty recently, and now she’s living with her Aunt and Uncle. I found her to be very Canadian for a girl who spent her whole life in Saudi Arabia. I mean, she is half Canadian, her mom was an Islander, so there’s that, but I didn’t get that sense of culture shock, that sense of her feeling like she’ll never fit in no matter how long she’s on the island for—that sort of thing that I was looking for—from Page. And she’s the narrator of the book, I have to say that her internal monologue, sounded really really childish. Like, I thought she was like 9 or 10, until it was revealed that she was a teenager in junior high. Maybe that’s just how kids talked in 2004, I dunno, I wasn’t here yet, but it wasn’t too long ago and I don’t think dialogue has changed much since then. Oh, and don’t get me started on the fact that her classmates nickname for her is “the Hulk”. I—yeah. Like it was just supposed to be some teasing, and some playing around because she’s got this massive snowsuit that makes her look like the Hulk. And then she takes it way too seriously. I have no idea why that affected me so much, I just thought it was really weird. Like when she was about to do something that she viewed as courageous or brave, she would always say that he “inner Hulk was being unleashed” or that her “inner Hulk was shining through or something. Anyway, did I fall in love with Page? No, no I did not. It’s just personal preference I guess. She’s too much like the girls that I don’t usually like to be friends with. I could never figure this kid out. She’s like this neat freak who tries to be super mysterious by smiling her best “Mona Lisa smile” and is a little too Canadian for a girl who lived her whole life in Saudi Arabia. It’s just weird to me. Let’s see if my feelings toward Page change once I read book 1…

WMD

I just need a minute to say that WMD is an interesting name for an interesting boy. I don’t know how I feel about him. I haven’t read the first book, so I don’t know why he goes by WMD. But it’s weird. Because if it’s a nickname I hope y’all know just how hard it is to pronounce a W. And then add an M and a D. What.

Delorey

I want to call this child DeLorean like the car/time machine from Back to the Future. But I’m not going to do that.

Roy Brown

I was SO thrown off my his name. I was like, THE Roy Brown is in this book? Since when did this become a historical fiction?! And then of course I realized that it was set in 2004, and that the REAL Roy Brown was long dead (and certainly not an 13year old). And then oF cOuRsE THIS Roy Brown knows everything about the one he was named after, and is able to answer *certain* trivia questions that *might* just lead to a certain *accomplishment* by SPACE. It’s a lil predictable, but that part is fine.

The storyline:

Aight, Imma go ahead and play the “not for me” card with this one. It’s not that I didn’t like the book—I did like the overall result of the book, don’t get me wrong—I just found it very lacking. See, what I expected was this really fun, easy breezy, academic rivalry between two schools in the form of a prank war, with cute characters, who by the end of everything find a way to call it a truce and stop pranking each other. But. That. Is. NOT. What. I. Got. What I got was… something. Nottingham plays ONE prank on SPACE an then suddenly it’s a prank war? SPACE barely even does anything about it! And honestly, I don’t even know what happened before that. Like it was just Page going around the island trying to figure out the knocking etiquette or playing with her cousins or getting spooked by WMD.

I figured that I’d end off with one final thing: why I decided to check out this book in the first place. WELL, with a title like My Year as a SPACE Cadet I thought it would be about Page’s year as a space cadet, like going to space camp. But guess what? A SPACE cadet is actually a student of “Shale Pit Academy of Creativity and Excellence” and not an actual space cadet. I was so excited. And for what. AnD fOr WhAt.

I’m really sorry about this one, because I’ve talked to Ms. Dalvay many times and I know that she is a wonderful a lady who always supports Digitally Lit and all of their youth ambassadors, so for me to not enjoy her book is a little sad for me 😢 but I tried SO HARD to like this book, but I really just found this book lacking.

*scrolls over book review*

Oh wow, that’s a long review. I’ll let you get back to your lives now, bye, and thank you for reading! 😀

~Ariela~