I had the opportunity to read “Ella and the Maze” by Selmon Beha, this book was released on the 25th of April. So it wasn’t technically an advanced readers copy but a way to spread her book and get reviews so it’ll get more attention.

This book doens’t really have trigger warning since it’s more a children’s book.

First of all, the genres labeled are as followed: Humor and satire, teen and YA and Sci-fi and fantasy. Humor and satire, I don’t really see it. Also, the teen / YA also a no. Maybe a book for kids between 11 and 14. I wouldn’t recommend reading above that age, since there are a lot of good teen /YA books out there.

The story was confusing, it’s about space travel and artificial intelligence but there are too many things overlapping, the storytelling isn’t that good. Ella lives on a spaceship with her family they are on a mission to get to a new planet and make it inhabitable for humans. Her parents are really smart people and have engineered a lot of difficult things. They’ve also created an artificial intelligent being called Maze. But Maze disappeared after a while and that set her parents on edge. Maze could do absolutely anything. So, was it really a mission to find a new planet or more a mission to find and contain Maze?

I’m really sorry to say that I’m only giving this a 2 star rating. The writing wasn’t great and the storytelling wasn’t what I imagined it to be. I mean, I can focus on a book, can concentrate like a champion. But if I can’t seem to wrap my head around it, a kid can’t either.
The last 20 pages I skimmed, because I was really done with the book so I know how the story ends.

It’s only a ⭐⭐ from me.