Pieces of Stars

Oh, this is a hard one to review, because there are a lot of nitpicky things I could say that are personal preference that really have nothing to do with the quality of the work and the storyline itself. I'll just put those at the end, and then, if you're like me, you can read them and know if you'll pick up this book or not.First of all, I found it fascinating that the somewhat infamous James Frey was one of the two authors involved in this book. I've never read a million little pieces, but I can only imagine it must be interesting, based on the imagination it took to create #4.This book is a chronicle of a few short months in #4's life. 4 moves from town to town, discarding fake ids like they are toilet paper essentially, and he's been doing it for 10 or so years of his life. His secret: he's an alien from another world, sent to earth to hide away, awaiting a time where he can go back to the planet of his birth to try and rebuild.Meanwhile, the Magodorians, evil alien race of resource grabbers, move from planet to planet, devouring all life, and any minerals, and head to the next to do the same thing. They are hunting down the Lorien threat, so that there will be no resistance for their next target: earth.The overall story was great. I was definitely interested in the characters, who were not only likable and believable, but were not the a-typical cliche characters you might encounter. There were even some characters who may have started out being cliche, but by the end of the book had shown themselves to be different in surprising ways.4 is strong and sympathetic, tending towards the sensitive side, which surprised me because both of the writers of this book were male. However, he's also a stand up guy, standing firm in the face of injustice.My rating of a four is because (1) the book is predictable in parts(including the big surprise at the end) and (2) the end was a bit drawn out. I think there could have been some editing done to trim some of it down and it would have been stronger for some of the sequences, and then we also could have had a proper ending. (3) The romance in this story was WAY too fast. I get these are teenagers, but we're talking about the END of October to the beginning of January and these two are declaring everlasting love by December? Hmmm...As for the nitpicky stuff... MUST we have ANOTHER book that is first person present tense??? Isn't that trend over yet? *sigh*