Alienated by Melissa Landers | Book Review

4:29 PM Ally M.G. 2 Comments

In Alienated by Melissa Landers.

We follow the story of top high school student Cara Sweeny as she is chosen to be the host to a exchange student from an alien race. 

Two years ago, aliens made contact with Earth and now Cara will have to share a bathroom with one. The alien race of the L’ehir hosts their first-ever exchange student with Earth hoping to build an alliance between humanity and L’ehirs. Cara was one of two other students who got chosen to be friend these aliens. She thinks her future is set and perfect with this opportunity. She will get a free ride to the college of her dreams, and will have the inside information about the mysterious L’eihr race that every journalist would kill for. (Perfect blog material).

The L’eihr that is sent to live with Cara and her family is a young teenage boy named Aelyx. With his arrival Cara’s life changes completely...for the better and the worse.

I originally bought this bought this book because the cover attracted my attention, when I bought I had no idea what it was going to be about….other than aliens and a possible love relationship. (Boy was I right!)

It was a fun read, because it was not exactly what I expected it to be. Yes, there was the obvious romance between Aelyx and Cara, but it was not the main story plot of the book! Their relationship did not bloom in any way till the last 60 pages of the book.

The story focused on the idea of how we, humanity, are so reluctant to change in the face of something new. There are people who did not like the L’eihrs and wanted nothing to do with them. That they'd go as far as to try to pass a bill to get rid of the three L’eihr students from Earth! 

Humanity’s fear of new things was mesmerizing, because it can be applied to the current world. I do not know if that was Landers’ key goal in this story, but it is scary that humanity’s fear stops us from achieving and learning new things.

L’eihrs have similar DNA from humans but as Aelyx always tells Cara, “They are not humans”. The L’eihrs are obviously much more advanced than humanity, since they were the ones to make contact with Earth, but at the same time the L’eihr race is a lot like humanity (beside the similar DNA). They have as much fear as humanity, but they don’t act upon it rashly like we humans.

I am not the biggest fan of plain romance novels, and if you are like too my dear reader, then you will not be disappointed with this novel.

Cara’s character took a while for me to fall in love with due to the fact that she would let other people influence her bit. But once she womaned up she was a joy to read. Cara is willing to stand up to what she believes in even if the rest of her classmates don’t. It takes a lot of guts to be able to keep a strong face when everyone pretty much hates you because you have an alien living in your house.

Aelyx’s character was my all time favorite, mostly because he is a bit sarcastic and he is like 110% done with human food (too many flavours). From the very beginning Lauders makes him very likable even when he is trying not be. He is an adorable baby who needs to be protected. Personally, I fell in love with him when he had to start reciting the human periodic table ( for reasons you’ll understand if you read the book ).

My biggest complain about this story is that it lacked enough descriptions. There were times where I couldn’t see the scene clearly and it bothered me because I wanted to have a clear image in my mind and I couldn’t. There were a few plot holes, but this a first book of a trilogy I believe so hopefully the holes are filled by the end of the overall story.

My rating: 3/5

GoodReads: 4.01/5