Special thanks to NetGalley for offering this book in exchange for an honest review!
“Joan Faraday Tanner, inventor, humanitarian, visionary, and presidential candidate. Her lovely face—bloody and broken, gasping its final breath—took over my vision. She was the important daughter, the smart and special one, while I, a common lunch lady, was easily replaceable. The star was dead, but the dropout flamed on.”
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Moon Dust in My Hairnet by J.R. Creaden was a story I wasn’t expecting to love so much. After curling up inside a lineup of fantasies, I was itching to dive into a sci-fi story that wouldn’t yank me into a massive series. This is a story that revolves around grief and an approaching war, but at the same time it managed to feel super cozy.
Lane is the younger sister of the famous Faraday Tanner, an inventor who was destined to lead humanity to a golden age. But she died, and now Lane is living beneath a blanket of survivor’s guilt. She’s not “special” like her sister was. She isn’t a genius, her parents want to coddle her because of her autism, and she doesn’t have the skills of the others around her. But when Lane is faced with a mystery surrounding missing goods, she knows that she’ll have to step up and become something more than a lunch lady in order to save her home.
20-year-old Lane was perfectly happy living in her big sister’s shadow. The great Faraday Tanner, who invented the gravdrive and inspired the movement to found the moon’s first independent colony, was the unequaled voice of the post-melt generation. That is, until an unimaginable tragedy cut Faraday’s legacy short.
Wracked with survivor’s guilt and desperate for her sister’s utopian dream to succeed, Lane embraces her job on the moon: lunch lady—which is more than her parents think she can handle. Her boyfriend’s supportive at least, when he’s not drooling over one of the new recruits. Lane tries to put the past behind her, committed to enjoying her kitchen work and dating her boyfriend and his new crushes. She even participates in planning Faraday’s memorial, forcing herself to grapple with monumental loss.
But when colony goods go missing and vital equipment gets tampered with, Lane can’t accept the events as mere pranks, banding together with new and old friends to save their home.
Moon Dust in My Hairnet offers a refreshing representation of queer romance, autism, and polyamory, and I found myself deeply rooting for Lane and the other characters in this cozy sci-fi adventure. If you’re looking for a fast, cozy read, this is a book that needs to join your TBR!