Don’t judge a book by its cover, they say.  Well, I did.  I bought this one because I loved the cover and, okay, because the title and summary sounded sophisticated enough.

There’s nothing sophisticated about WHERE THE FOREST MEETS THE STARS.  As I listened, I began wondering if it was a YA novel or a straight-out children’s book.  Oh, the writing is competent enough – good grammar, nice descriptions.  The main character is an ornithologist, which is interesting.  She has recently lost both her mother and her own breasts to cancer, so she is a sympathetic character in that.  And the plot has potential – little girl shows up at the heroine’s cabin claiming that she is an alien from a far-off galaxy.  I really did want to believe that.

But there is something rote about this book.  The potential for emotion is there, but the carry-through is not.  Turns of the plot are simplistic, such as when the male lead, who allegedly suffers from depression and agoraphobia, recovers after a few heart-to-hearts.  Dialogue is flat, adding to the cardboard feel of the characters.

The author does do a good job in making me wonder whether the little girl is, indeed, an alien – such potential here – though the child is too often a bratty little whiner.  Okay.  I listened to this book, and that may have been the way the narrator read chose to read it.  She also made the female lead too argumentative at times, perhaps in an effort to create drama.  Male voices sound identical.  Female voices are all ballsy, apparently to distinguish them from the resonance of the main character, whose voice was lovely.

Bottom line?  I’d say that, like the eponymous forest, you should venture into this book at your own risk.