Star Daughter - Shveta Thakrar

 My rating: ⭐⭐⭐

From the cover:

"If the night sky holds many secrets, it holds Sheetal Mistry's secret the closest. A secret that explains why her hair is the silver of starlight, or why some nights the stars call Sheetal by name. Stars like her mother, who returned to her place in the constellation Pushya years ago. Since that day, Sheetal has been forced to hide.

But as her seventeenth birthday draws near, the pull from the sky is growing stronger. So strong that Sheetal loses control, and a flare of starfire burns her human father - an injury only a full star's blood can heal. Sheetal has no choice but to answer the starsong and ascend to the sky. But her celestial family has summoned her for a reason: to act as their human champion in a competition to decide the next ruling house of the heavens. 

Desperate to save her father, Sheetal agrees. But nothing could have prepared Sheetal to face the stars' dark history - or the forces that are working to shut the gate between the realms for good."

Try to resist diving into this book after taking in the beautiful cover. I couldn't do it. We all know I'm a sucker for a gorgeous cover.

The story is also different from a lot of what I've read before, so I was really intrigued getting into it. A teenager who is half mortal, half star...what does that even mean? As it transpires, one of the things it means is that she has out-of-this-world glowing silver hair, which, I'll be honest, I am very jealous of. Something else that it means is that Sheetal has star fire, which, as the description indicates, gets her into some hot water after she accidentally uses it on her dad.

Things get a little strange after Sheetal's father is injured. Journeying to the star world and learning about what it means to be a star was pretty fascinating, but I wish there was a little more action, particularly in the second half of the book. The world-building and descriptions were vivid, but the bulk of the book takes place over the course of two days while Sheetal trains for a contest, and it got a little thin after a while. Still, though, at the end of the day it was a worthwhile read, and I enjoyed it.