I enjoyed this a lot, but the first half definitely had the stronger writing. Towards the end, lots of story lines kind of jumbled together and the minimal world-building lead to several Dues Ex Machina moments, which was a shame. All in all, this was maybe a little too YA-leaning (although the MC is 20) for my liking. Everything resolved itself a bit too neatly, too sugary.

Still, this was a really fun read. The characters are super diverse and I loved the autism rep. The story itself is both cozy and gritty (for lack of a better word), in a mix that makes for pretty easy reading, though themes like grief, guilt, and mental health are very central to the story.

✨ This was an absolutely wonderful read! (Though I had a feeling this would be the case the moment I read the blurb.) I was guided gently into the story and then next minute I was fully sunk!
✨ I absolutely adored the main character Lane. Living in the shadow of her older - innovative and brilliant - sister who recently died, she is just trying to survive in her new life under pressure of both her parents and herself. Just trying to do the job close to what she loves and that she can do - cooking. There was something about her that felt so real to me.
✨So many of her mannerisms and her thought process that rang true for me - especially as she is so sweet and all over the place. She is an easily lovable character.
✨ I found the plot to be engaging, all leading up to some intense last chapters. I found the ending to be satisfying, and also sweet. Though I in no way wanted to finish reading this book!
✨There is so much too this story and to this world, I instantly wanted to know more about the characters and follow their story as I read. Especially with such lovely queer relationships threaded throughout. These didn’t take away from the plot but enhanced it, especially from Lane’s POV.

✨ I recommend this to anyone looking for a sci-fi novel with a gentle vibe and a lovely amount of flare, but not too much flash and bang (but just enough to keep things exciting!

Thank you to NetGalley, the author, and the publisher for sending me this free eARC (eAdvanced Reader Copy). I am leaving this review voluntarily. This title was published 19th April 2024.

This was a DNF for me. I just couldn't seem to get into this book after 2 attempts. I can't say anything was bad other than I just couldn't connect to the mc and the internal dialogue just didn't pull me in. I may try again in the future as this seems by all accounts a good book but it may just not be for me.

I’m going to be so real, I had no strong feelings on this one. I read it. It existed, and then it ended.

The premise for this book sounded very nice, but unfortunately, I just couldn't get into it properly. I had a hard time believing in the setting, and just couldn't connect with the characters enough to force myself to get through the second half of the book. The pacing felt a bit off, and the characters lacked in depth what they didn't lack in representativity. I'm disappointed, but will keep an open mind to any future works by this author!

Moon Dust in My Hairnet by J.R. Creaden was a story I wasn’t expecting to love so much. After curling up inside a lineup of fantasies, I was itching to dive into a sci-fi story that wouldn’t yank me into a massive series. This is a story that revolves around grief and an approaching war, but at the same time it managed to feel super cozy.

Lane is the younger sister of the famous Faraday Tanner, an inventor who was destined to lead humanity to a golden age. But she died, and now Lane is living beneath a blanket of survivor’s guilt. She’s not “special” like her sister was. She isn’t a genius, her parents want to coddle her because of her autism, and she doesn’t have the skills of the others around her. But when Lane is faced with a mystery surrounding missing goods, she knows that she’ll have to step up and become something more than a lunch lady in order to save her home.

Moon Dust in My Hairnet offers a refreshing representation of queer romance, autism, and polyamory, and I found myself deeply rooting for Lane and the other characters in this cozy sci-fi adventure. If you’re looking for a fast, cozy read, this is a book that needs to join your TBR!

I loved seeing so many different iterations of queer, spicybrained people in a hopeful future, but the pacing felt off - there was a lot of wheel-spinning for the first two thirds of the book, then everything happened at once (and I had to go back a few pages at one point to make sure I hadn't missed a crucial part of the plan. I hadn't) and...I don't know what else exactly it was that didn't entirely work for me. It kind of felt like it couldn't decide if it wanted to be cozy or political, tried to be both and as a result kind of ended up being neither. I really wanted it to lean into one or the other. Also, I called the sketchy people as soon as they were introduced, but that may be bc I read a whole fuck of a lot of related stories.

I, as an autistic multiple disabled person, really like this very disability heavy book with lots of disability themes (like infantilisation and the frustration with it) but it needs another rewrite to be even better. Most of the writing is good but some of the writing, pacing and story is off kilter and it pulls you out of the story to the point you can no longer follow along. It hurries and misses crucial info sometimes. It's a good book, just needs some polishing. And I loved all the twists and turns, how it picked up speed in the second half and kept you on your toes.

Thank you to NetGalley for providing me an ARC of this book for an honest review. All opinions are my own.

I ADORED this book. It was a lovely cozy sci-fi adventure, with fantastic autistic and poly representation to boot!

While the world was wonderful and so believable, the characters were what really shone through. Even the background characters clearly had their own lives and didn't seem to exist as just a backdrop for the story to take place.

I also REALLY appreciated the truthful representation of autism, particularly with Lane's character. Her autism was not represented by the extremes of infantilization or Savantism, but as a condition that makes some things about life difficult. I particularly loved the way her sensory issues and problems with social cues were highlighted without everyone around her only feeling pity. I also thought it was excellent that she responded to people in her life that infantilized her and treated her as less-than.

I also really enjoyed the representation of poly relationships. Not being poly myself, I certainly don't know all the intricacies of poly relationships, but I enjoyed that this book didn't only focus on the positives or the negatives, but rather a more realistic portrayal of both the highs and the lows in a poly relationship (also I absolutely adore the polycule in this book because they're all so good for each other ahhhh).

Truly a joy to read, and one I will happily reread and recommend to others!

Publication date: April 19, 2024

First of all, thank you so much to Netgalley and Mythic Roads Press for having this available in the "read now" section!

I am actually not a huge sci-fi reader, so normally I wouldn't have picked this book up. But I am trying to build a feedback ratio on netgalley and the description of the book said that the main character was autistic", so I decided to read it. And it has been one of the best decisions I have ever made.

I should clear up that this is not the typical hard sci-fi story. It's kind of a mix between a dystopian climate fiction and a sweet YA contemporary. We follow our main character Lane, the little sister of the most famous woman on earth, who invented the gravdrive, a device that made it possible for humanity to inhabit the moon and save themselves from the climate crisis that has devastated our planet. The problem is that that woman was killed by an enourmous dictatorial empire named the melt.
The book starts when Lane arrives to the first moon colony, without the sister that started it all and the melt trying to shut them down.

The book has an overall slow pace, we know there are dangerous things happening and that the stakes have never been higher for our main characters, but we are inmersed on Lane's head, which is mainly worried about getting through her every day life. The book, at least to me, felt very warm and cozy, we followed all the mundane things that happened in the day to day of the moon colony, and watching the protagonist coming of age through her own grief and fears. It's exactly the type of story that I adore reading, and this one felt more specific to me and my taste because it existed in a world where queerness, disability and racial diversity are the norm.
Probably, my favourite thing about the whole book were the characters. Every single one of them was incredibly well though out and developped troughout the novel, and the author was careful weaving their storylines through the plot, which I also really enjoyed.
Because, don't take me wrong, the sci-fi aspect was definitely there in the form of a mystery. It was complex, but very easy to comprehend at the same time. It was completely believable in what comes to our own near future, regarding our concerns with climate change and the treath of totalitarian rule over our modern democracy systems.

I would say that Moon Dust in My Hairnet's ultimate message is of hope, hope that everything will be okay, wether with our personal struggles or the ones that concern us all, and the trust we have to have in each other to make things happen. And those are some of my favorite things, so YES, give it a try, even if you are not a sci-fi reader.

Thank you NetGalley for the ARC.

I’ve spent a while trying to find the right words for a review that are never going to come, so buckle up, here we go. We love, love, love us some neurodivergent representation. So this book - slay. We also love healthy representation of different relationship styles without shame. Poly relationships that aren’t reduced to being all about sex and exploitation, even better. In fact, we loved that there was so much caring involved.

Now, as someone who has an amazingly complex relationship with grief, Lane’s story was actually a little bit healing for me. The way she was holding on to Faraday and through group came to the realisation that she didn’t know if she wanted to heal. It was through her friendships and relationships that she healed. I was in it for Lane’s healing story.

But the aggressors were more surprising than who the saboteurs were. Unless space travel had become more easy and I just missed that part? But as I said, I was more emotionally attached to Lane’s healing journey than I was to some buffoon trying to take over a lunar settlement.

This one was really relatable to me as I also have autism so the representing was there and I felt validated. There are great depictions of grief surrounding her sister and I really resonated on how Faraday felt like she fit into a very specific role in this new environment and how she eventually had to rise above to really get what she wanted and what was best for the colony. This was a really good book and I really liked Faraday as our main character.

Moon Dust in My Hairnet by JR Creaden

This is mainly a sci-fi story that takes in the future on the moon. Earth has experienced a cataclysmic event referred to as “the melt” and this group of settlers has left Earth and made a home on the moon. And I’d say roughly 70% of this is just Lane trying to balance her grief and trauma, her family, her boyfriend who’s suddenly avoiding her to spend time with his boyfriend, and potential new love for herself. There’s kind of a subplot about a traitor and a spy that really kicks into high gear in the last 30% of the book. In that sense, I wish that this chose one thing to be and was just that for the entire book. I wish it was either a slice of life sci-fi novel about Lane figuring out her new life, or a mystery/thriller novel where she has to find/outwit the spy and it’s all tense and exciting. The book kind of wants to have it both ways, and while I like and enjoyed this, I think it’d be a stronger book overall if it wasn’t trying to have its cake and eat it too. I like a lot of things that it did. I do love me some casual queerness/queer normativity and poly normativity, but the book takes a weird moment where it decides it has to explain why there’s queer/poly normativity and I honestly just don’t buy it. My suspension of disbelief broke so hard. There’s a few other places where, well, let’s say I’m skeptical.

All in all, I had a good time with this, even if there were certain parts I didn’t entirely buy into.

Thanks to NetGalley and Mythic Roads Press for a copy of this in exchange for an honest review.

Thank you to NetGalley, J.R Creaden and publisher for sending me a free ARC in exchange for an honest and fair review.

4.25/5*

I loved this book. From the beginning it had me hooked, and I didnt loose interest throughout it. The plot, while being fairly predictable, was entertaining and I didn't want to stop reading.

By far my favourite part is the relationships between the different characters. I love how there's so many different types of loving relationships shown, but all being viewed as equal and worthy. The main characters are polyamarous and for me (monogamous but very pro poly) I loved how this was done. It showed how this could be done lovingly between many people, but also showed the work that's needed for it to be healthy. My only issue here is that at some points it did seem a little unicorn hunting, but this disspeared later on. I also thought the conversations that were had between them helped a lot to negate this. All the main characters are very understanding with each other, and through therapy learn how to support each other the best they can.
I also loved how it turned initial first impressions on their head, along with reasons as to why people show their selves different ways that I really connected too. An example of this is V, who is immediately seen as a stuck up bitch who turns out to be such a caring soul who uses masks to protect herself.
There is a wide range of neurodivergence shown, and I feel like a lot of people will be able to identify with at least one person in the book if not more.I really related to Lane's issues with communicating properly, knowing what you mean in your head but being unable to express it properly and how that goes onto to effect the relationships with the people around you. I also related to her initially being against therapy due to feeling like you didn't deserve it, which I feel a lot of others will too.

As a massive astrophysics/space nerd who is terrified of destruction done to our planet, I loved the Luna setting. I loved seeing scientific advances been used for genuine good, with so much hope added. It's so easy for people to use science for profit no matter what (looking at you oil company's). But the genuine love and hope given to the world by a young genius is so inspiring for me, and something I feel like we need more of. This is such a hopeful book, and I love it.

My only real negatives for this book is that the bad guys weren't properly fleshed out for me. They seemed very generic, with the only major thing being touched on is Faraday's murder. I didn't connect with the character's fear for them and felt like in the end they went down very easily. I also noticed that black was the only ethnicity that was capitalised through, eg a white person vs a Black person, which came across very weird for me in a book all about inclusion and acceptance.

Overall, I love this book. I will definitely be recommending it to anyone who loves queer, spacey, hopeful books in anyway, and shall be shouting from the rooftops about it.


Goodreads categories:

Mood of the Book:
Adventurous
Inspiring
Emotional
Hopeful
Funny

Pacing:
Medium

Plot or Character Driven:
Character

Is there strong character development?:
Yes

Do you find the characters loveable?
Yes

Is there a diverse cast of characters?
Yes

Are the flaws of the main characters a part of the book?
Yes

Lane is an autistic lunar lunch lady dealing with loss and adjusting to her new home on the moon, all while juggling relationships and dealing with threats from a dangerous overlord.
I really enjoyed this book. It deals with grief, mental illness, disabilities, and relationships (romantic and familial).
It's fun and emotional, adventurous and cozy. There's a lot packed into this book, and i think Creaden does it well.
There were a few things that felt clumsy and pulled me out of the story, but overall, it was fantastic. I really appreciated the autistic representation, being autistic myself, and i related to both Lane and V. I will definitely be reading more from this author in the future.

This is a review from Netgallery

So many of the books I've read lately have felt quite samey but THIS feels refreshingly original and new
The writing and voice caught and snagged me immediately, probably because the author is also autistic
The exploration of grief from an autistic lens made my heart ache with sympathy

"How was I supposed to wish for anything else again, when nothing would change that she was gone and I wasn't?" 😭😭

One of my favorite aspects was the epitaths that listed the food and beverages for the day

The way her parents infantilized her was enraging and so relatable

I'm an avid cook so all of the descriptions about cooking were glorious to me

The conflicts Lane has with her mother are so relatable they were almost difficult to read

The polyamory was definitely very interesting to read, even though it wasn't my favourite

The meltdowns were so relatable
The growing sense of unease was palpable

The book is definitely cozy but the steaks feel quite serious and tense

CW
-abuse
-overdose
-meltdowns/shutdowns

I thought the premise for this book was interesting but I did not get on with the main character’s personality and their voice. I understand they are autistic, that is absolutely fine as I am autistic myself, but it seemed like the author had researched autism through watching shows that portray autism in an over the top manner (see The Big Bang Theory).

Regardless, I enjoyed the plot, the voice seemed childlike even for a YA, and some of the characters were well written.

Thanks to NetGalley and Mythic Roads for this ARC.

I found Moon Dust in My Hairnet very enjoyable. The plot is very simple, and I felt that the book focused more on the relationship of the characters anyway.

The book tells the story of a community that goes to live on the Moon, that is made possible by a clever device invented by a young scientist. Unfortunately the inventor, and founder of the community is no longer alive by the time the move happens, so the events that follow are told by her sister's point of view.

As younger sisters often are, our main character, Lane, (and her parents) keep unintentionally comparing her to her sister, which paints an unfavourable picture of her, and leaves her feeling unloved. When a mysterious girl approaches Lane to involve her in a complicated polyamorous relationship, she is so starved for love and positive attention that she would do just about anything for this girl.

The main premise of the book was interesting. Moving to a vulnerable extraterrestrial location is exciting, especially in the light of what they left behind on Earth. I was confused about the way the plot progressed further. Both the main character, and the community leaders go investigating the strange occurrences in their colony, and the possible ways the big bad corp guy from Earth can harm them, but everybody is so focused on the 'who' and the 'how', none of them stops to question 'why'. However, this lack of explanation wasn't too bothersome, since the story is told by a 20-year-old autistic person's point of view who may not be interested in such explanations.

The story features a lot of neurodivergent characters. A lot. In fact, as the book progresses, and the main character gets closer to others, we learn that every single friend she made is neurodivergent. I liked that in this future everyone is accepting about queerness and disabilities. This futuristic community is otherwise depicted culturally homogenous, but some people are still referred to as "Black" with a capital B when describing them. (This is odd, and felt offensive to me. As if being black came with further implications than the colour of their skin.)

The characters are all lovable, trying to find their place in a world not unlike ours, which makes this an easy, lighthearted read for young adults who like to picture a more tolerant and respectful future.

I really liked the premise and how this could in fact be our future. I loved Faraday from the start and she held such a presence throughout the story.

With such a huge cast of characters, it was hard to care enough about everyone and keep all their names straight along with their descriptors. Felt like navigating the maze of hallways on the base! A bit more chatacter development may have helped or maybe cutting back a bit.

Quite often I was on Lane's side, even when she was in the wrong. Her quirks made her relatable.

The imagery on the lunar base was solid and having the comms and menus at the start of each chapter was a nice touch. I did find the pacing a little off at times but overall it was an enjoyable read.

I was a little bit torn on my opinion of this book, at the same time I loved it but also kind of wanted it to end.

I love the range of representation, from neurodivergence to physical disabilities, POC & queer identities, and poly relationships. At times they were approached somewhat sloppily, so it felt clumsy. The normalization of therapy and needing support were very nice, though sometimes cliche. (Not inherently a bad thing, I just didn't enjoy it this time.) I did enjoy the way grief was approached.

The world-building wasn't to my taste and I didn't enjoy the writing style too much, but these are completely personal tastes so I just didn't happen to be the target audience for those. The pacing felt confusing to me, it felt like "there's imminent danger and we need to act quickly!" But at the same time, we might skip a week and a half. It was difficult for me to figure out how much time there would be to get something done.

I hoped to relate to the MC more, but as there are so many variations of autism, we ended up being extremely different. I mainly felt sad for and pitied the MC but I didn't end up liking her too much. I really wanted to like them, but kind of wanted to read more from another character's POV instead. I did love the growth she went through after actually seeking proper help!

I found the characters somewhat irrational and confusing when they seemed to be changing their minds without explaining their reasons. I kind of felt like Lane could've had at least some resentment etc. towards her mother around the end, instead of completely accepting everything as soon as she gets praise.

The twists felt like a little too much for me, I almost couldn't keep up anymore. The whole thing felt a little too stuffed with SO MANY new things for Lane to navigate. Even though that's realistic since life doesn't care how many things are going on, it might throw another crisis at you, I felt like we wanted to address too many issues in one book and had to add them to the mix.