Getting Started With These Broken Stars
The duology kicks off with These Broken Stars by Amie Kaufman Meagan Spooner, a star-crossed romance set during an interstellar war between the Terran Dominance and the Auroran Alliance. It follows Lieutenant Terezi Ash and Prince Jase Iosif on opposite sides of a conflict, with both characters crash-landing on a mysterious planet after their ships are destroyed. The second book, This Shattered World, picks up after the events of the first one. Both books came out around 2015-2016. If you want to read it, the book is available through most major retailers. You can grab the hardcover from Amazon or Barnes and Noble, pick up the ebook from Kindle or Apple Books, or borrow the audiobook from Audible. Libraries usually carry it too through OverDrive or Libby if that's your thing. I've read this series probably a dozen times across different formats, and here's what actually matters when you're approaching it. The pacing is aggressive, especially in the first half of the first book. A lot of people drop it around page 60 because the worldbuilding feels scattered. You're getting plot in droves while the setting details come in drips. Stick with it. The payoff starts hitting around the third act and stays consistent through both books.
One thing nobody warns you about: these books work best when you read them back to back without a long gap. I tried reading These Broken Stars, then jumping into something else for two months, then coming back to This Shattered World. The tonal shift between the books is significant enough that forgetting the first one's emotional beats made the second feel flat. Binge them within a week or so. Your experience improves noticeably. The dual POV structure is where this series actually shines technically. Kaufman and Spooner each handle one character's chapters, and the voice distinction is sharp enough that you never confuse whose head you're in. That's not always the case with co-authored YA, so pay attention to how they do it. Terezi's chapters are tighter, more clipped, more tactical. Jase's run longer, more introspective. It's a deliberate craft choice, not an accident. Now here's the part where I have to be honest about the weaknesses. The romance moves fast, which is standard for YA but still worth noting. If you're looking for slow burn development across 400 pages, this isn't it. The conflict resolution in the second book also relies on some convenient plot devices that make logical sense in the moment but fall apart if you think about them for more than thirty seconds. I've had readers push back hard on the ending, and they're not wrong, but I still recommend the books because the execution carries the structural flaws.
Another edge case that trips people up: the audiobook narration. Both books use multiple narrators, and the quality is solid but inconsistent. Some listeners report that the accent work for the Auroran characters fades or changes between books. If narration quality matters to you, check recent reviews before committing to the full set on audio. The ebook and physical copies don't have this problem at all. Content warnings if you need them: war violence, injuries, death of secondary characters, some mild language. Nothing extreme by genre standards but not light reading either. The romantic content is handled at a typical YA level with kissing and implied intimacy but no explicit scenes. Bottom line, read the first book in one sitting if you can. Don't overthink the worldbuilding gaps in the opening chapters. Binge both books close together. And don't let the fast romance pace scare you off if that's not normally your preference, because the character work underneath it is genuinely good.
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