Chilling Effect, by Valerie Valdes

Review copy provided by the publisher. Also the author is a Twitter buddy.

Eva Innocente and her crew may not be rich, but at least they're honest--mostly honest--welllll, more honest than Eva's family. So when Eva's even-more-honest sister is kidnapped and threatened by a galactic crime syndicate called The Fridge, Eva has to save her--even if some of the decisions she makes along the way are not technically what would be known as wise or sensible or OH MY GOD EVA WHAT ARE YOU DOING. There are spaceship maneuvers, low-gravity cats, brain parasites, human-alien relations...in more senses of the word than one...fencing, fighting, torture, revenge, true love...actually I'm not remembering the fencing very well. But this is in fact a kissing book, and also there are true friends who stick with the heroine.

Also she expresses herself in emphatic Spanish from time to time, so if that's a thing you need--and for some of you it definitely is a personal positive, I know--and the rest of you can pick up what you need to from context, trust me. No, you can. Suck it up, buttercups, you can do Klingon, the Spanish is great.

Here's my caveat, though, having read it but also seen the marketing and some other reviews: there is a purple upbeat Julie Dillon cover, and the first chapter features the cats, and the word "fun" is getting used a lot for this book in discussions I've heard. How much you parse it as a pure fun adventure is likely to depend on how you read a book where one of the main engines of plot is (and this happens very early, so I don't feel like it's a major spoiler) the threat of sexual violence against the heroine. Because there is a very persistent sexual violence threat against the heroine. It is, in fact, one of two or three central things that drives the plot. If you don't find that fun or relaxing--and I don't--you might still find this book interesting and well done for the things it is doing--and I did--but your "fluffy fun yay!" quotient is going to vary considerably. One of the things it is not doing is providing a place where people who find the threat of sexual violence stressful can relax and read about space battles and cats and aliens and spaceships. Not every book has to do that, but be forewarned that this one is not. Well-written, yes; fluffy, no.

(I've also seen some assumptions that this must be YA based on the cover and--let's be real here--the fact that the author is a woman of color. Don't do that. This is adult space opera, go read it as adult space opera. Or not, if you were looking for YA! But be clear that Valerie never once claimed this was YA, not even a little. Know what you're g