Chilling Effect audiobook

ARC received in exchange for an honest review - thank you! This is actually 3.5 stars, but I rounded up because I loved the premise and I REALLY loved the heroine. Captain Eva Innocente of the spaceship La Sirena Negra has fallen on hard times. She walked away from doing business with her father because she hated how shady it was, and she hated the person she was when she was with him. But that's had financial repercussions for her and her beloved crew. They transport cargo from place to place (their latest: a batch of twenty psychic cats) and basically live hand-to-mouth.Here's a rundown of everyone on board La Sirena Negra:➽ Eva, who is BRILLIANT. She's a foulmouthed Latina who's streetwise, aggressive, and incredibly loyal. She also has a definite streak of 'grey morality.' While she doesn't actively try to hurt innocents - especially after some of the mistakes she's made in her past - she's definitely a pragmatic woman, not a naïve do-gooder. ➽ Pink (aka Dr Rebecca Jones) is the closest thing Eva has to a best friend. Snarky and clear-sighted, Pink is 100% loyal to her captain - but that doesn't translate to being blindly loyal. I appreciated that she called Eva out on her bullshit when she felt it was needed, and I wish we'd gotten to see more of her character, plus more of the backstory she has with Eva. ➽ Min is their pilot. Although she does also have a human body, she prefers to spend most of her time with her consciousness tethered to the ship. I'd have liked more of an explanation of how this works - like, does her human body still need sleep? - and she didn't say an awful lot, but I could feel how much Eva cared for her.➽ Leroy handles their cargo. He used to be an expendable soldier in the corporate space wars, so he has bad PTSD which makes him avoid his two mums, out of a fear he'll hurt them. But he's also loyal, friendly, and dedicated to online gaming. ➽ Vakar is their engineer. He's a quennian, a type of alien described as having a face like a pangolin, facial palps, and emitting scents depending on which emotion he's experiencing. His personality was definitely sweet and slightly submissive. So this book is a space opera in the truest sense of the word: we hop with Eva from planet to planet as she carries out assignments for The Fridge, an intergalactic crime syndicate who are holding her sister Mari hostage. Unfortunately, Eva isn't great at completing the assignments properly. Time is running out - she needs to find a way to free Mari, get money to pay her crew, and somehow smash The Fridge while she's at it. To make matters worse, an emperor known as the Glorious Apotheosis has taken offence at her refusal to join his harem, and has placed a bounty (dead or alive) on her head. What I liked: ✔️ This was diverse AS F*CK. Eva is Hispanic, Pink is black, and obviously there are a ton of aliens like Vakar thrown into the mix. There are also loads of nonbinary characters (and not just aliens). ✔️ Zero sexism. Males, females, and nonbinary people were all captains or mercenaries or planet rulers or hunters. ✔️ Funny in unexpected places. It wasn't laugh-out-loud, but there was a gentle Douglas-Adams-style humour underlying the whole book. ✔️ It was well-written and engaging. The quick pace got me hooked straightaway. A Note on Classification It is EXTRAORDINARILY hard to classify this book, age-wise. I wouldn't call it YA: Eva is over thirty, and it doesn't have that vaguely coming-of-age sense YA novels tend to exude. But I'm also struggling to label it as 'adult' for one key reason: there is absolutely nothing sexual in this book. Even kisses are disposed of with brutal speed, and the love scenes are fade-to-black. I won't lie, I was disappointed . Not even out of prurience or anything, just because the book kept dropping intriguing hints about Vakar's anatomy. He seems to have genitals which are retracted inside his body? And near his abdomen? Plus he's covered in scales? Even a little bit more elaboration would have helped. I get that this book isn't focusing on the romance, and that's why there are no sex scenes, but if you're going to have alien-human sex at least tell us how it's physically going to happen! Which leads me on to: What I didn't like: ❌ Vakar was described very poorly. Beyond him having blue eyes and facial palps (which I'm struggling to picture) NOTHING WAS DESCRIBED. Like, does he have hair? What colour? What colour is his skin? What colour are his scales? ❌ The nonstop action got a bit exhausting after a while. It's a long book, and in the first half I appreciated the rapid pace, because it eliminated any drag or boredom. But it felt like there wasn't a single moment where we could take a breath and pause. Partially that's Eva's character: she's totally non-introspective, which is alright, but that also meant we didn't really see any character growth in her. All her character growth seems to have happened in the backstory.❌ Beyond a few ominous hints, this backstory is never explained. There's no time to: like I said, the constant fighting wasn't conducive to long chats. But I wanted to know stuff like how Eva met Pink and the others. Hopefully that'll be explained in the sequel...❌ For a science fiction book, there was astoundingly little science. No technology is explained; we just accept that it's there, and that humans and aliens have somehow learned how to use it. I needed to know more history. Is this a world in which humans have always known that aliens existed? When did humans discover them, if not? Infodumps are obviously bad things, but the issue here was the opposite - an info-lack, if you will. Overall It was a good debut and I liked many of its elements, but I'm hopeful that the sequel (which I will be keeping an eye out for) will expand on some of the issues I mentioned. [Blog] - [Bookstagram]

I received an advanced copy through NetGalley.Chilling Effect is a quirky space opera adventure reminiscent of Firefly, with an eclectic space crew captained by Eva. When Eva finds out her sister has been kidnapped by a nasty crime syndicate, she takes on a series of terrible jobs--all while keeping the truth secret from her crew. Of course, everything goes wrong, but does so in surprising ways. That's part of the fun of this book. It's a total screwball romp. You have no idea what's going to happen next. There are many little video game tributes throughout that made me grin, too.Eva's a fun heroine. Well-meaning, edgy, and competent at her job. Her voice, with Spanish sprinkled throughout, is wonderfully authentic. I've only seen this done by one other scifi book, Amber Royer's Free Chocolate, and here's hoping more such books are on the way.I'm betting the cover of this book alone will sell a bunch of books. It gets across the fun vibe quite well. I think about my only complaint is that I wanted more of the cats!

The story is about as absurd as 'The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy' if not quite as cleverly constructed but the crew and events of this plot reminded me of 'Firefly' most of all. Especially at about half way, when the captain is considering her crew as her family and she is privately recollecting how they had each joined her, the characters here felt very familiar to those aboard Serenity. I liked the crew more than the captain but I think that's the point of her character. It probably went on for a little too long but is fun and entertaining. I quite liked the scent decoder device and there was heaps of other quirky tech in this story. I had figured out the "switcharoo" well before half way and although I usually don't mind when that happens, in this book it felt like it dragged until it was finally revealed at about three quarters.I liked the book, I'll continue the series.

Sooooooo I'm a bit confused and surprised. I read this cause there were weird cats on the cover...but I ended up liking it in a non-gag way. The characters were enjoyable. I think the conflict was a little too simple but I can see why that would appeal to some readers when there's already so much to remember about the world. I want more of Eva's crew and more of the weird space cats. Eva's relationship with her sister and father are especially messy in this book and are very clearly going to be the focal point of the next book which I am absolutely going to read.My big beef with this book is the way so many chapters and scenes were ended. It was like the author wrote 25 different spots and was like "ha! This is where I'm going to end the book" but then she got another idea and added that on...and then did it again and again. It messed with my head quite a bit.I've got lots of questions and enjoyed a lot of the cast so I will definitely keep reading.

To read more reviews from this author and others, check out my blog at keikii Eats Books! 67 points, 3 ½ stars Quote: {{You are very cynical.}}Eat a turd, she thought.{{You are also very rude.}}"And you're a parasite attached to my skull who can't seem to understand the meaning of the phrase 'Jódete, coño!'" Review: Chilling Effect is a weird book for me. In the beginning I was determined to love it, and then the honeymoon period wore off fast. By the midway point, I was certain I hated the book.  In the end, I loved the ending. And as much as I loved that ending and that it made me want to continue on with the series, I just don't know if I will yet.I also had to spend an unreal amount of time on Google Translate, and Urban Dictionary, and just plain googling around to figure out what, exactly, people were saying. There is so much Spanish sprinkled in throughout the book, at times I didn't even understand what was going on without looking things up. Hell, half the chapter titles are in Spanish! And it wasn't just words. No, it was phrases like "live by the sword, die by the sword." It was actually pretty frustrating because I had to stick to my computer to read this. (I'm still completely and totally lost at "Me Sube la Bilirrubina"...)Once Chilling Effect started it didn't really stop. It opens with a bunch of psychic kitties causing the main character, Captain Eva Innocente, and her crew a lot of trouble. Then drops into a kidnapping exploitation plot before swinging wildly into an attempted sexual slavery that is somehow not being vilified by everyone. The entire book, the characters are swinging from one task that goes wrong to the next task that goes wrong. Not exactly my favourite type of story.Then, within all those tasks that go wrong, there are a bunch of plotlines that are just there to make the readers go "hey I recognise that!". A LOT of pop culture, and some not, as well. There is an entire chapter of Pride and Prejudice in here, in the chapter titled "El Orgullo y el Prejuicio" (guess what that translates as?). Chilling Effect just liked to pull from popular things for inspiration and then recreate them in space for fun. I'm sure there were more in here that I missed than I got.Captain Eva Innocente, our main character, gets into a lot of trouble. She isn't the most competent person. She seems to be chronically incapable of controlling herself, her emotions, and most spectacularly her anger. Which gets her into more trouble than any other outside force. She also isn't really able to control her crew, either, which is a bad trait in a Captain, in my opinion. Eva is also in a really weird romance that I actually found really cute. And the romance was kind of the saving grace of the book in the end.As I already complained, I really didn't like the start of the book. It just wasn't for me. Once Chilling Effect got down to the point, in about the last 20% of the book, I actually really, really enjoyed it. And that is the worst thing about it. Because it was really good when it stopped playing around. I loved it in the end. And now I want to read the next book in the series, even though I wasn't going to bother before I got to the end.I received this book from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review. Thank you to Valerie Valdes, Harper Voyager, and Netgalley for providing the opportunity to review this copy!

This is an #OwnVoices science fiction book based in space! I felt like the book was slow at first but it definitely picked up towards the middle. The Latinx protagonist is Eva Innocente who is captain of a space ship called the Sirena Negra. The book has romance, action, and family drama. Overall I loved this book and I'm excited to read the sequel!

4.5 ✨I LOVE funny and quirky space adventures and now one with a Latina main character!? I loved this book.My favorite thing about SciFi is that it’s a genre that allows you to be as creative as you want, and Valdes did just that! Psychic cats, dinosaur orgy, a main love interest whose emotions you know through his smell? THIS is what I love.I also really enjoyed how the use of Spanish and Latin American culture wasn’t justified. It just existed and that was fine!I loved Eva as a main character, she was funny, sarcastic, grumpy, and I want her to be my best friend. Vakar is my love, I’ll protect him till the end of time.This isn't the kind of book that will have you constantly turning the page, but instead is a book you can easily put down and pick up at another time and still have fun.Also, it had Star Wars references, so it immediately won me over 🥰TW: Cursing, Death, Grief, Sexism, Stalking, Toxic friendship, Violence, War, Abandonment, Alcohol, Bullying, and Kidnapping

This is for sure in my top reads, I loved this book so much, such a fun read, hilarious and I highly recommend it if you’re interested in space, aliens and most importantly, psychic cats!