Book picks similar to
Sapphire and Planet Zero by Christina Blake


young-adult
angst-personal-drama
arc
from-author

172 Hours on the Moon


Johan Harstad - 2008
    Only one is coming back. It's been more than forty years since NASA sent the first men to the moon, and to grab some much-needed funding and attention, they decide to launch an historic international lottery in which three lucky teenagers can win a week-long trip to moon base DARLAH 2 - a place that no one but top government officials even knew existed until now. The three winners, Antoine, Midori, and Mia, come from all over the world. But just before the scheduled launch, the teenagers each experience strange, inexplicable events. Little do they know that there was a reason NASA never sent anyone back there until now-a sinister reason. But the countdown has already begun. . .

Starfighter Rising: An Epic SciFi Adventure (Starfighter Rising Series Book 1)


Daniel Seegmiller - 2020
    The galaxy needed him.Sixty years ago the Nolvarics nearly conquered Earth. They were defeated by starfighters.Konran dreamed of becoming a starfighter, but he blew his one shot five years ago. Now his life is stuck in neutral as a glorified rock hauler.He didn’t expect to find Nolvarics lurking in deep space. They didn’t expect him to survive the confrontation.Now all eyes are on Konran as he is plunged into a whirlwind of space battles, peril, and conspiracy. The Nolvarics will stop at nothing to catch him, dead or alive.Destiny hangs in the balance. Can Konran rise and claim it?“Starfighter Rising accomplishes what many fiction novels don’t. It guides you swiftly into a believable universe of fantastic space battles where the laws of physics are described in ways I’ve never read before. You suddenly feel as if you are experiencing the story yourself.”- Ryan G.“I picked it up on a Friday night thinking I would read a few chapters. By Sunday morning, I had finished the entire book.”- Brad S.

Defiant


Aaron Hodges - 2021
    But when his mother is caught up in the slaughter of a fledgeling resistance group, Rydian’s entire family is thrown into infamy. His fellow humans brand him traitor, while the Alfur hail his mother a hero. Desperate to clear his name, Rydian must delve into his mother’s past, and the secrets she sought to uncover. Secrets about the Alfur, about their alien technology—and the mysterious Light that powers their world.

When the Sky Fell on Splendor


Emily Henry - 2019
    If you weren’t a casualty of the accident yourself, chances are a loved one was. That’s the case for seventeen-year-old Franny, who, five years after the explosion, still has to stand by and do nothing as her brother lies in a coma. In the wake of the tragedy, Franny found solace in a group of friends whose experiences mirrored her own. The group calls themselves The Ordinary, and they spend their free time investigating local ghost stories and legends, filming their exploits for their small following of YouTube fans. It’s silly, it’s fun, and it keeps them from dwelling on the sadness that surrounds them.Until one evening, when the strange and dangerous thing they film isn’t fiction–it’s a bright light, something massive hurdling toward them from the sky. And when it crashes and the teens go to investigate…everything changes.

The Shadow Society


Marie Rutkoski - 2012
    She has never really belonged anywhere—but she couldn't have guessed that she comes from an alternate world where the Great Chicago Fire didn't happen and deadly creatures called Shades terrorize the human population.Memories begin to haunt Darcy when a new boy arrives at her high school, and he makes her feel both desire and desired in a way she hadn't thought possible. But Conn's interest in her is confusing. It doesn't line up with the way he first looked at her.As if she were his enemy.When Conn betrays Darcy, she realizes that she can't rely on anything—not herself, not the laws of nature, and certainly not him. Darcy decides to infiltrate the Shadow Society and uncover the Shades' latest terrorist plot. What she finds out will change her world forever . . .In this smart, compulsively readable novel, master storyteller Marie Rutkoski has crafted an utterly original world, characters you won't soon forget, and a tale full of intrigue and suspense.

From a Distant Star


Karen McQuestion - 2015
    Everyone else—his family, his friends, his doctors—was convinced that any moment could be his last. So when Lucas miraculously returns from the brink of death, Emma thinks her prayers have been answered.As the surprised town rejoices, Emma begins to question whether Lucas is the same boy she’s always known. When she finds an unidentifiable object on his family’s farm—and government agents come to claim it—she begins to suspect that nothing is what it seems. Emma’s out-of-this-world discovery may be the key to setting things right, but only if she and Lucas can evade the agents who are after what they have. With all her hopes and dreams on the line, Emma sets out to save the boy she loves. And with a little help from a distant star, she might just have a chance at making those dreams come true.

The Taking


Kimberly Derting - 2014
    . . and then . . . nothing. When sixteen-year-old Kyra Agnew wakes up behind a Dumpster at the Gas ’n’ Sip, she has no memory of how she got there. With a terrible headache and a major case of déjà vu, she heads home only to discover that five years have passed . . . yet she hasn’t aged a day. Everything else about Kyra’s old life is different. Her parents are divorced, her boyfriend, Austin, is in college and dating her best friend, and her dad has changed from an uptight neat-freak to a drunken conspiracy theorist who blames her five-year disappearance on little green men. Confused and lost, Kyra isn’t sure how to move forward unless she uncovers the truth. With Austin gone, she turns to Tyler, Austin’s annoying kid brother, who is now seventeen and who she has a sudden undeniable attraction to. As Tyler and Kyra retrace her steps from the fateful night of her disappearance, they discover strange phenomena that no one can explain, and they begin to wonder if Kyra’s father is not as crazy as he seems. There are others like her who have been taken . . . and returned. Kyra races to find an explanation and reclaim the life she once had, but what if the life she wants back is not her own?

Dandelion


Philip R. Johnson - 2020
    By the age of fourteen, she has spent her entire life training as a "Ranger," ready for the day when she will be among the first humans ever to set foot on an alien world & build a new civilization.When Dandelion suffers an emergency toward the end of its journey, Amber & her fellow young rangers are evacuated & land on the planet Newhome years ahead of schedule. While the adults left behind on Dandelion slow the ship & turn it around to come back---in eight years---Amber & her friends must build lives for themselves amid revelations that will change Humankind's destiny forever.Meanwhile, aboard the ship, secrets that were buried over three hundred years ago finally come to light...

Alien Boyfriend for Christmas


Luna Kingsley - 2020
    Her dream job as the lead botanist on Niri was worth traveling across the galaxy, but she’s not going to miss out on the trappings of her favorite holiday. Not to mention she misses everyone back home. Everyone except her ex, of course. She’ll do everything she can to avoid seeing him again but running into him around town is inevitable.Verrik is tired of the monotony of his day-to-day life on Niri. He works long days as an electrician to try to get ahead and save what money he can. One day he hopes to be able to support a family of his own but as an orphan, his opportunities are limited. The one good thing that comes from his current job is meeting the unique, curvy little botanist from Earth.She’s headed back to Earth for the holidays. He’s ready for his own adventure. Her suggestion to be her fake alien boyfriend is unconventional, but the payment is too good to pass up. When the lines between fantasy and reality begin to blur, they find themselves navigating unexplored territory.Can a Niri Alien and Earth female find a way to make a relationship work for real?Alien Boyfriend for Christmas is a standalone sci-fi romance full of steam with no cheating, no cliffhanger and a happily ever after guaranteed!

The Rules


Stacey Kade - 2013
    Never trust anyone.2. Remember they are always searching.3. Don’t get involved.4. Keep your head down.5. Don’t fall in love.Five simple rules. Ariane Tucker has followed them since the night she escaped from the genetics lab where she was created, the result of combining human and extraterrestrial DNA. Ariane’s survival—and that of her adoptive father—depends on her ability to blend in among the full-blooded humans in a small Wisconsin town, to hide in plain sight at her high school from those who seek to recover their lost (and expensive) “project.”But when a cruel prank at school goes awry, it puts her in the path of Zane Bradshaw, the police chief’s son and someone who sees too much. Someone who really sees her. After years of trying to be invisible, Ariane finds the attention frightening—and utterly intoxicating. Suddenly, nothing is simple anymore, especially not the rules…

Worldlines: A "Many Worlds" Novel


Adam Guest - 2020
    

Valor's Child


Kal Spriggs - 2017
    Jiden wants more for herself and she is ready to step into a bright future, one which may lead her far from the frontier world of her birth. She has no dreams of following in the footsteps of her military family's heritage, no desire to live a life of hardship.She's just got one obstacle in the path to her dreams: five months of military school. She'll be away from her friends, subjected to long hours and a crushing work load. She'll learn to shoot, to fight... and how to kill.Jiden will need every skill she's learned, because her family's enemies have put her in their sights. She's going to have to rise to the challenges in order to survive. She soon learns that her dreams might not be as good as she imagined. With her life on the line, Jiden will need to fall back on the skills she learned and prove that she's a child of valor.

Willow Woods Academy for Witches


R.L. Weeks - 2018
    Fans of Harry Potter and Beautiful Creatures will love this series. Kat and Angie have just enrolled at Willow Woods Academy for Witches against their parent's wishes. They're thrown into a magical, mysterious world that is everything they dreamt it to be. However, when an ancient book falls into their laps, their worlds are turned upside down. 10 years ago, a rivalry between the covens of Willow Woods Academy and Morwood's School cost many their lives and cast a dark shadow over the academy. Now, Morwood's has opened again for the first time since the incident, and mysterious happenings are occurring - and they all seem to be surrounding Kat. School's never easy, and with her exams coming up, a stalker in the trees, and her family name shadowing doubt over what side she's on, the first year of school is more of an adventure than she had ever anticipated.

The Truth Lies Here


Lindsey Klingele - 2018
    Townspeople repeat the same phrases—verbatim. Men in black suits stroll around Main Street. Chunks of her memory go missing. Pretty soon, Penny’s research leads her to the long-ago meteorite crash in Bone Lake’s woods, and she’s going to have to reconsider her definition of “real” if she wants answers. . . .

Spinning Starlight


R.C. Lewis - 2015
    But as the only daughter in the most powerful tech family in the galaxy, it’s hard to escape it. So when a group of men shows up at her house uninvited, she assumes it’s just the usual media-grubs. That is, until shots are fired.Liddi escapes, only to be pulled into an interplanetary conspiracy more complex than she ever could have imagined. Her older brothers have been caught as well, trapped in the conduits between the planets. And when their captor implants a device in Liddi’s vocal cords to monitor her speech, their lives are in her hands: One word and her brothers are dead.Desperate to save her family from a desolate future, Liddi travels to another world, where she meets the one person who might have the skills to help her bring her eight brothers home—a handsome dignitary named Tiav. But without her voice, Liddi must use every bit of her strength and wit to convince Tiav that her mission is true. With the tenuous balance of the planets deeply intertwined with her brothers’ survival, just how much is Liddi willing to sacrifice to bring them back?Haunting and mesmerizing, this retelling of Hans Christian Andersen’s The Wild Swans strings the heart of the classic with a stunning, imaginative world as a star-crossed family fights for its very survival.