Review: 'Star Shipped' by Cat Sebastian
In the spaces we don’t quite inhabit
Star Shipped moves through the fracture between genre expectations and the messy reality of a mind at war with itself.
The contemporary romance follows Simon, an actor eager to break free from the confines of a long-running sci-fi show while navigating his exasperated attraction to his co-lead, Charlie.
The journey is a familiar one: a road trip that forces proximity and loosens years of guarded tension. We’re aware of the destination, which is why the novel lingers on the ride.
At thirty-four, Simon is a study in weariness. Drained by migraines, the rituals of his OCD, and the sweltering noise of a set he’s dragged himself to for too long, he longs for a space where his mind won’t be a constant adversary.
Here, the narrative defies the damaging myth of the “put-together” man. Simon’s social awkwardness and self-doubt humanize him, capturing how the disquiet of youth doesn’t simply vanish with age.
It’s a refreshing admission in a genre often shaped by mythmaking: that one can continue to grow and remain unmoored, albeit in newly revealed ways.
And yet, his inner world isn’t always fully realized.
Simon’s struggles thread through the narrative with a persistence that’s impossible to miss, though not always in the way the story intends.
They recur like a faint but constant drone—present to the point of exhaustion, but never grounded deeply enough to move from repetition into revelation.
While we’re told about the tension that shapes him, especially when it pushes into intimacy, we’re seldom invited to inhabit the body’s anguish. The result is an emotional landscape that calls for attention without ever fully anchoring itself.
Given the expected levity of the genre, this is understandable, even if it keeps us slightly at a distance. However, that distance eventually seeps into the relationship itself, making the romance surprisingly restrained.
Even as Simon and Charlie push beneath the film of their shared projections, the narrative skips over the heady rush of desire.
From this sparseness emerges a dynamic that settles almost immediately into something lived-in, trading the shock of newness for the comfort of the known, however worn and doubted.
The brief intoxication that does surface lives in the sensuality of their early intimacy. As the impression of touch overtakes the mechanics of the act, Simon’s senses dissolve into something unbodied.
Naturally, this intensity softens over time, echoing how sex loses some of its potency the more habitual it becomes.
The prose follows a similar pattern. Its cadence and structure settle into a predictable rhythm, mirroring the narrative’s softened edges. Even the early animosity folds into well-worn bickering, leaving the story with no true conflict.
But between the cracks, we find the novel’s thoughtful treatment of relational and emotional fluidity.
As the characters wade through their interior worlds, they allow sex, romance, and friendship to shift organically, freeing themselves from the confines of role-based expectations and the flattened versions of connection those roles often impose.
In the end, Star Shipped reaches past its limitations by balancing the weight of mental health with the buoyancy the genre promises.
While the execution occasionally stumbles, the novel offers a sincere glimpse of two people learning to navigate each other’s fractures—resulting in a mostly pleasing, if slightly overpolished, arc of connection.
An advance copy was provided by Avon, an imprint of HarperCollins.
Path of Engagement
♞♝♖♞♞
Genres
General Fiction (Adult)
LGBTQ+
Romance
Publication Date
March 3, 2026