Review: Contact, by Susan Grant

✩✩✩✩✩

Genre: science fiction romance

Offensive content: mild violence and a few sex scenes, all towards the end of the book. Totally in context and not excessively graphic, but be warned

I. LOVED. THIS. BOOK. Science fiction romance is tricky and often unrealistic. Well, this one is totally believable, the romance between the two characters evolves in a natural way and the story comes alive as you read it, pretty much as if you were watching a movie. 

Jordan Cady is a single mother to a six year old girl and works as co-pilot for United Airlines. On a routine flight from Hawaii to San Francisco, the 747 she's co-flying encounters an odd storm and disappears from radar. But the plane didn't crash, didn't land and is not flying any more. To the world, it has vanished. To the flight crew and the passengers, it seems as if they were abducted by terrorists.

Then the pilot dies and Jordan is left in charge of almost three hundred lives facing an unknown threat. But she promised her daughter she would return home and intends to fully fulfill that promise. After a series of mishaps, they realize they have been taken by an alien spaceship. They are told that they were saved from extinction, since Earth was hit shortly afterwards by a meteor that caused mass destruction, and they will be relocated to another planet as soon as possible. They are led to believe they are Earth's sole survivors. 

Kào Vantaar-Moray is the adoptive son of the alien ship's commander and put in charge of the Earth refugees. He is a haunted man, both by his childhood memories and by his experience as a prisoner of war. He expects gratitude from the Earth survivors, but instead is met with defiance. Jordan's integrity and courage awaken in him feelings he thought were long forgotten, if not permanently lost.

But this is just the beginning. Actually, although it is a romance novel, and there is a happy ending, there is enough mystery, suspense and unexpected twists and turns to keep you glued to the book. With the exception of the two main characters, almost no one is what they seem to be. 

I liked that the aliens are depicted as human, and the explanation for their existence sounds reasonable and believable. They are just like us, only with more advanced technology at their disposal. 

The only thing I didn't like was the fact that some phrases seem to be repeated several times, almost word by word, throughout the book. But it was not enough to distract me from the story. I read it in less than three days (while still working, cooking, taking care of the kids and all the rest) because I just couldn't put it down! So go check it out, even if science fiction is not usually in your reading list, it'll be totally worth it! 

Enjoy your weekend!

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