Play Book Tag discussion

I never expected to enjoy this as much as I did. A queer YA story built around a NASA mission to Mars, with reality TV thrown in was intriguing, but it turned out to have much more depth than I expected. High school junior Calvin Lewis Jr. is a budding journalist with an avid social media following whose life is unexpectedly upended when his dad is chosen to join the Orpheus program that plans to send a manned expedition to Mars. They move to Houston where their semi-dysfunctional family gets caught up in the reality-TV coverage of the space program, and where Cal meets a boy he develops a huge crush on. There's family drama and mental illness, but there's also a genuine love for space exploration as well as all the complexities of how social media affects people's lives and how they cope. The characters are flawed but feel very real and multi-dimensional. This was an intriguing, fascinating, and heartwarming read, and highly recommended. My rating is 4.5 stars, though I will round down.