Alpha and Omega by Carol T. Luna

The Quick Cut: An outcast boy finds his life thrown out of balance when their enemies called the Talarians come back to take the Earth for their own. Drama ensures when he's forced to take matters in his own hands to save his father figure. 

A Real Review: 

 Thank you to Carol T. Luna for providing the ARC in exchange for an honest review.

   Our family isn't always made up of people who share our DNA. Sometimes, you make family for yourself by being close to a group of friends, getting married, having kids, or adopting children. For Ao, this is the case with his father figure, Kaisei. 

 Ever since Ao was young, he has been deemed a monster to those nearby. Being banished from the town, he lives with his adoptive father, Kaisei. His life is as happy as it can possibly be considering the Earth was destroyed in comparison to how it was after the war with the Talarians. Now, one hundred years after the war ended, the Talarians have descended from their home in space to take back the planet once stripped from them. In the process, Kaisei is taken hostage in the process. Can Ao do what needs to be done in order to get his father figure back? Or will the process of rescue turn out to be more labor intensive than expected? 

 This book is a fairly quick read, so if you're looking for something shorter - this is the one for you. The characters are well written, with an author who took the time to delve into who they are and really craft those interactions between one another. You can feel the connection between Ao and Kaisei. 

 That being said, the violence in this story gets particularly graphic for the Young Adult genre in a number of places. I wouldn't consider myself all that sensitive to gore, but even I had to take a breath after some scenes due to how aggressive they were. Rather than go so heavy with the violence, I wish they would have spent more time really fleshing out the environment. No matter how much I enjoyed the characters and their conversations, I found it difficult to imagine where they were and what was going on. 

 A character-centric story with too much violence for my taste. 

My rating: 3 out of 5