SPINNING STARLIGHT by R.C. Lewis

Sixteen-year-old heiress and paparazzi darling Liddi Jantzen hates the spotlight. But as the only daughter in the most powerful tech family in the galaxy, it's hard to escape it. So when a group of men shows up at her house uninvited, she assumes it's just the usual media-grubs. That is, until shots are fired. 

Liddi escapes, only to be pulled into an interplanetary conspiracy more complex than she ever could have imagined. Her older brothers have been caught as well, trapped in the conduits between the planets. And when their captor implants a device in Liddi's vocal cords to monitor her speech, their lives are in her hands: One word, and her brothers are dead. 

 Desperate to save her family from a desolate future, Liddi travels to another world, where she meets the one person who might have the skills to help her bring her eight brothers home-a handsome dignitary named Tiav. But without her voice, Liddi must use every bit of her strength and wit to convince Tiav that her mission is true. With the tenuous balance of the planets deeply intertwined with her brothers' survival, just how much is Liddi willing to sacrifice to bring them back? Haunting and mesmerizing, this retelling of Hans Christian Andersen's The Wild Swans fuses all the heart of the classic tale with a stunning, imaginative world in which a star-crossed family fights for its very survival.

I have to admit that I wasn't familiar with The Wild Swans, but the blurb for this book caught my attention, plus I'm a sucker for stories inspired by folklore, myths and fairy tales. Also, before starting, I read up on the original to get the gist. 

Liddi is the only daughter of a powerful tech family and will eventually inherit the company. She might not be celebrated for innovative discoveries, like her brothers, but all eyes are always on her anyway. She's a bit of a party girl, or at least that's what she shows the vid-cams following her everywhere.

When a bunch of men raid her house and she finds out all her brothers are missing, she gets caught up in some serious business. Unable to trust the one person who might be able to get them back, she ends up losing her voice and in a place she didn't even know existed...

I was really looking forward to reading this book, and enjoyed the beginning. I liked Liddi and her world. I thought her running away was a great angle. Then she ends up in an unfamiliar place, alone and far from home... and while the initial excitement of what was going to happen to her, because she couldn't use her voice, kept me in the story the feeling quickly faded.

What started out as exciting and interesting soon turned into a repetitive cycle that dragged the story down to the point of me not caring. At all. Also, I have no problem with stubborn characters, or characters doing silly things to protect the people they care about, but this seriously went overboard. 

To the point of becoming annoying. O_o

Spinning Starlight is a story that hooked me in, but ultimately couldn't keep me there. Liddi's motivations and attitude towards the people trying to help her is too immature. Also, while the world building started out fresh and exciting, the more we learn about it the more complicated and forgettable everything gets.

I'm sad and disappointed about not loving this story because I thought I would. I like retellings, and this one had so much potential, but just didn't shine through in the end, IMO.

Spinning Starlight, March 2017, ISBN 9781484723685, Little, Brown US