BEYOND the MAPPED STARS. Oh my god. This book started getting really interesting towards the middle and there would be time when I didn’t want to stop reading it because it was so interesting to me. It completely surprised me because I didn’t know a book could get so interesting. It managed to bypass my expectations I had while I was reading it and came to be really nothing at all like I was expecting.

Let me apologize. I might sound really intrigued at points in the review, I can’t help it. I am completely shocked. The novel is very similar to Where I Belong, with its perspective of finding your place in the world, not to mention a lot of traveling. The finding where you belong is so full that it’s almost like Elizabeth was traveling all over trying to find where she belonged and then wrote it all down.

The determination and hope in this novel is heavy. Elizabeth doesn’t have many rules to follow, but many times she doesn’t get to go places if she breaks a rule. Elizabeth’s slogan of (Follow your Dreams) is very meaningful. Following your dreams is look upon and could lead to being labeled as determined. I can’t help but remembering always wondering why the title is a man named dave. I am familiar with the idea of The Lost Boy and found myself wondering why that wasn’t the name of the book. In the novel, they don’t know what they’re supposed to do with the boy because they don’t know if the boy has a home or not. It could have very easily been A Man Named Dave. In my opinion that makes the title of the novel a lot more powerful. Something that was as simple as figuring out what to do with a boy they have found is very unknown to the people that have found him. The people have to believe what they’re told to do with the boy. They don’t get a right to know what to do with the boy. Knowledge is very necessary. But according to The Lost Boy. self preservation is strength.

A Man Named Dave is written in present tense and has big paragraphs of triumph, inspiration, and young generations. Those things usually distant me from the novel and the characters, but Eves kept me fully interested in the novel. She keeps talking in circles and the ideas are repeated but it’s very interesting, nonetheless. I have to admit that I got distracted a lot while I was reading this novel, but I became very intrigued by the setting of the novel. At some points of the novel it seems the only way to experience the emotions of the characters is through a character telling the stoey through their eyes. This is very much the case in this novel, as it was written in first person; yet, Pelzer never failed to impact me by his feelings. David always makes sure that readers never feel distant from the events that are happening around them, except for the beginning of the novel when Pelzer is just starting to become awakened to telling the story. I gained a very strong attachment to Pelzer and thrived on listening to the story he is telling. I am now a full time member of the Overthinking Police, hearing everything, feeling everything, seeing everything and last but definitely not least, (the thing that the Overthinking Police are not allowed to do) which is questioning everything.

The main and recurring message of this novel is about following your dreams and preservation. One, censorship, is always limited and limited exposure to the ideas of the world; the other, preservation, is brought upon for following certain dreams. Both can be extremely helpful.

Inside A Man Named Dave, he demonstrates the perks of taking in an abandoned child by showing how the party completely rewrote the impacts of taking in an abandoned child by telling a story of a man who took in an abandoned child. We also spend a lot of time with Pelzer in the preservation of kindness, where following your dreams and preservation take place. People who commit overthinkingcrime are tortured until they grow to love and obey A Man Named Dave and serve only the interests of Pelzer.

When reading this novel I almost didn’t know what to think about it. I’m really not sure that my brain still works correctly, or if it ever worked right at all. This novel has a way of making you think that you know exactly what you believe about everything and then making you question whether you should believe anything at all about anything or not. It’s really the strangest thing. Hmmm. Doublethink? maybe. Maybe not.

However, I think everyone needs to read The Lost Boy. You need to be in the mood to read it, though. It’s definitely all worth it in the end though. The novel is absolutely incredible and I loved it. I don’t like to re-read novels but this novel will definitely be one of them that I do re-read. It’s a pretty easy read, but more blantly, it is a major MUST read.

I recommend the novel “Beyond The Mapped Stars” because it is about how a young girl is following her dreams to becoming an astronomer, but if you don’t want to get somewhere in life or you don’t think your dreams could be real then I wouldn’t recommend this novel to you, so if you like bring positivity to your life then this is the book for you.

Series Info/Source: This is a stand alone book. I borrowed a copy of this as an ebook from my library.

Thoughts: I really liked the first 60% or so of this story. Unfortunately, the end felt really preachy and got to be a bit much.

The premise of the story is that 17 year old Elizabeth, who lives in a Mormon community, wants to become an astronomer. When her sister is in the middle of a difficult pregnancy, Elizabeth gets the chance to travel out to her sister. This allows Elizabeth to travel, not only to visit her sister, but to stop by Denver where the eclipse is going to be. There she might have the opportunity to meet some of the famous science figures she so admires.

There were things I liked about this book and things I didn’t. I enjoyed the look into a Mormon community of the 1880’s. I also enjoyed watching Elizabeth have a bit of an adventure across the countryside as she journeys to Denver. Getting a glimpse into the astronomy field of this time was also fascinating.

However, Elizabeth comes off as very immature. In fact most of the characters here lack depth and come off as fairly stereotypical. A big “Lesson” of the story is that you don’t have to be just one thing but can blend different aspects of life to suit you…for example you can be religious and study science, you can be a wife and go to school…etc. I thought Elizabeth was very narrow minded herself (after being upset at how narrow minded everyone else was) for her initial views on all of this and the big revelation didn’t seem that big to me.

I also got a bit tired of the emphasis on how everyone was undercutting everyone else. Maybe this was supposed to be historically accurate, but there is so much emphasis on people being mean to each other. Elizabeth was too Mormon or too white or too female, other characters were too black or too unreligious or too male. I think this was supposed to point out how it’s okay for everyone to be different, but it ends up making the story kind of a drag to read and there was just too much emphasis on this. I was like “I get it, I get it, they all hate each other!!! Can we please move on with the story!”

Last complaint is that the end gets really, really preachy. The last couple chapters are basically Elizabeth explaining to us how much she has grown and how she is going to make the world work for her and meet her goals. Even though we had read the story, we had to have Elizabeth explain this to us in a very lengthy way. It left a bad taste in my mouth and made a story I was, for the most part, enjoying go sour at the end.

My Summary (3/5): Overall I liked the setting, time and adventure in this story. The selfish characters, over discussion (and emphasis) of everyone’s differences, and preachiness of the story at the end left a bit of a bad taste in my mouth. I don’t plan on checking out more books by Eves, but I am not sad I read this. There were things I liked here and things I learned, there were just also a lot of areas the story was lacking in as well. ( )