The Stars And The Blackness Between Them is an afro-futuristic sapphic book with magical realism elements about two teenage black girls from different backgrounds who fall in love. Audre is a Trinidadian girl who gets sent to Minneapolis to live with her father after her mother catches her making out with her girlfriend. Mabel is a black American girl who has a unique style, loves Whitney Houston and playing basketball. The two girls become friends and through their growing affection for each other, they create a space to express their shared identity and love.

As fantastic as this book sounds, it fell completely and utterly flat for me. The only reason why I've awarded this book an extra star is because of the diverse representation, especially the way in which it represented my Caribbean heritage but that's really it. This book relies too heavily on the merits of its quirks and uniqueness. It tried to create a transcendental aura, steeped in spirituality and astrology but the writing was so superfluous, flowery and cringe-worthy that I felt disillusioned.

I have no idea what value Mabel's dreams of Queenie contributed to the plot, it had absolutely no bearing on the story and could've been cut altogether. Also the ending felt like a cop-out for me, providing an eye-roll of a convenient end to a boring story that offered only cursory development to begin with.

This book celebrates queerness and blackness in a heartfelt soul-searching way and is all about transcendence and spirituality but ironically, it just felt like words on a page to me and I felt no real connection to it.