I received this book for free, this does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review

And there it was, looming over them like a skyscraper, steepled black against the starry sky: Providence I.

Twenty years ago, a crew was assembled and placed on a ship that had the newly harnessed black matter engine that only the chief engineer, Halvorsen, seemed to understand and was set to take off for an exoplanet that could sustain life. Horrifyingly, the world watched as their hope for an escape from an increasingly weather destabilizing Earth, was poofed out of existence, literally. As Halvorsen did the countdown and got to one, the crew and passengers disappeared. Halvorsen went into hiding and one year later disappeared. Now, in 2061, Cleo and her friends, Kaleisha, Abe, and Ros, execute their “Space Heist” plan and break into the facility that houses the spaceship Providence I. Only, as they search for clues to what happened, the heist is on them and the spaceship's dark matter energy fires up and they're suddenly on the way to the exoplanet. With the help of a hologram, courtesy of the ship's original Captain, Billie, who uploaded her brain into the ship's computer, Cleo and her friends will work to discover the truth of what really happened, traverse space and time, and fight for progress with love.

And four of them decided, idiotically, that if no one else was going to solve the mystery of Launch Day, they were going to do it themselves.

The Stars Too Fondly was a scifi story that was told almost exclusively through dialogue, leaving character development feeling not as there to me, thus bereft that I knew these characters. The first half is told a lot from Cleo's point-of-view, as she talks to her friends, readers learn a little about the world in 2061, how Earth is heading more and more towards desolate. There were also archived documents from communications between the captain and the chief engineer, with newspaper stories to create kind of flashbacks to let the reader on what happened in the past in between the chapters; while informative, I did think it hurt some of the flow for me. One thing that didn't quite make sense to me, the horror of not understanding what happened with the Providence I launch, is said to keep anyone from wanting to try such a thing again but the excitement of building it was also said to have inspired the new generation to all become STEM graduates? It's alluded that the companies are scared, so they see no profit but all these STEM graduates haven't inspired or gained scientific knowledge to build up a space program again, when it seems direly needed? I also struggled mightily with the vibe of this, the first problem, the characters were all late twenties but this definitely has a Young Adult feeling to it and the second, vernacular doesn't seem to have changed at all in the future. I don't know if this is a futuristic version of The Tiffany Problem, but “dude, slow your roll”, “pray tell”, and “It helped, she quickly learned, to think of the passing days aboard Providence I like a montage in an eighties movie— a training montage, a getting-the-team-together montage, a “dancing and sock-sliding through the empty rooms” montage.”, said by a twenty-seven year old in 2061 doesn't trip you up and take you out of what is a scific story, like it did me, then you'd probably enjoy this more than I did.

“My friends call me Billie.” The hologram blinked at her.

Once the ship takes off, you get some of Cleo excited to be on the space adventure and Kaleisha angry, because she had a good life on Earth and didn't want to leave. Abe and Ros are around but, for the most part, aren't focused on for too much of the story in the first half. The second half gets more scifi and we get more of it told from Billie's pov, I wasn't a STEM student, so the science parts sounded somewhat believable for a scifi fiction story, but I have no idea if they'd pass a sniff test to others in the know. The second half answers some questions with Halverson accessing powers from a different dimension, that he was warned away from and the consequences of his ignoring. Cleo and her friends get powers from the dark matter engine and those powers help them immediately, Cleo and Kaleisha suddenly can get the ship to jump in distance so the original seven years to get to the exoplanet, will only take a few months, handy. Cleo can also see into the past and future, with Ros getting some of that future ability too. It gets a little hard to follow in that way scifi can, but it becomes clear that Cleo and her friends are working with what gave the warnings against Halverson, whose disappearance gets answered, along with what happened to the passengers of the ship.

But anyone with half a brain— like, say, tiny lesbians with mommy issues and a fear of commitment, or starship captains who have lost everything— knows that love can hurt too.

The romance aspect wasn't filled out or developed enough for me and it's going to hinge on if you think a programmed hologram representing an uploaded brain can be sentient. Cleo and hologram Billie are snarky with each other and then a little into the second half, I guess that snark was love, not sure I can say I felt it. It becomes even more your mileage will vary when Cleo finds out what happened to the passengers and her and her friends fight to rescue them, bringing the “real” Billie into the picture. The ending gives us a battle (with an extremely found quick answer for defeating), a sex scene that felt forced in, and an abrupt back home. This explored different dimensions, profit and progress, and what constitutes love and it's power, but I think it got lost on its way more than landed.