Honey, I Found a Starship
By: J.N. Chaney and Matthew Goodwin
My Rating: Three out of Five Stars
Best For: 14 and up

Honey, I Found a Starship: An Awesome Premise That Failed to Deliver

Okay, looks like I need to be the voice of reason. There are a WHOLE lot of five star reviews, but this is NOT a five star book. I’m all for asking readers to suspend belief to enjoy a story, but this takes it too far. Each conflict is contrived, it takes way to long for things to happen, and even though it’s fiction is should give some fictional reasons for it to be plausible. I mean, Spiderman has made up powers, but at least there’s an explanation for his made up power. This family just doesn’t pass the sniff test. I started reading, it started dragging, so I skipped forward to about 50% and didn’t miss anything.

The premise is AWESOME, and clearly some of the early readers enjoyed it. But it was only published about 4 months ago, and I suspect we’ll see the sky high ratings dip as people start to discover it.

The setup sounds like a blast: a father tries to bond with his teenagers by moving into a new neighborhood, only to unearth a massive alien spacecraft buried under their house. The vessel accidentally launches them into deep space, separating the family members across different sectors of the universe. To get them back, this ordinary dad has to transform into a seasoned space captain while evading interstellar syndicates and corrupt government agents. Sounds fun, right?

The problem comes down to basic storytelling logic. The narrative stretches credibility by constantly forcing the characters to make baffling, reckless choices just to drive the plot forward. If the family members possessed even a shred of everyday practical intelligence, the vast majority of their life-or-death crises wouldn’t exist.

To make matters worse, the ship operates on a supposedly brilliant artificial intelligence, yet it constantly relies on untrained teenagers to execute complex technical work. Watching clueless kids handle manual combat maneuvers and navigation calculations while the supercomputer sits on its hands feels — weird. It is clear the authors handicapped the technology just to give the humans a purpose, which completely shattered the fictional realism for me.

Content Guide for Parents & Discerning Readers:

Age Recommendation: 14+

Language: Mild.

Violence: Moderate. Space battles and sci-fi danger, but nothing bloody or graphic.

Sexual Content: None.

Thematic Intensity: Moderate. Focuses on the anxiety of a separated family trying to reunite while running from galactic criminals.

The Verdict:

3 Stars. Meh. I’ll put this on my “nice try” shelf. The concept is stellar, but the actual execution gets weighed down by slow pacing and frustrating character logic. Unless you can fully switch your brain off and ignore the plot holes, you might want to skip this ride.

Happy Reading!