Star Shipped by Cat Sebastian Review

Simon and Charlie, actors on a long-running sci-fi show, can’t stand one another. Charlie is impetuous, outgoing, and basically feral, and Simon thinks he should have stayed in reality television where he belongs. They’ve spent the better part of a decade quarreling over the spotlight and pretty much everything else, and everybody in the industry knows it. Now that Simon’s contract is finally done, he can move to New York, start fresh with work he actually likes, and get away from Charlie.
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Simon’s only problem is that people might assume he’s been pushed off the show due to being impossible to work with. And he is kind of difficult to work with. He doesn’t get along with people—unlike Charlie, who somehow tricked everyone on the show into adoring him despite some outrageously bad on-set behavior during the show’s first season. Simon would rather never have to see Charlie again, but reluctantly agrees to stage a very public friendship during the short time before he moves. When Charlie has to leave town to deal with a family emergency, this means Simon comes along. Their road trip brings Simon to places he would never have willingly chosen to visit—and he finds he’s actually not having a terrible time.
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The more he gets to know Charlie, the more Simon suspects he’s underestimated his former coworker. Simon also realizes that after seven years, Charlie might know him better than anyone ever has. Even stranger, Charlie seems to be starting to actually like him, despite knowing him so well. Still, Simon is about to move three thousand miles away, so whatever’s starting between him and Charlie can’t really amount to anything... right?

Strained and conflicting scifi tv show actors faking a friendship as a publicity stunt to save their acting career is an incredibly fun concept that serves as the premise for Cat Sebastian’s contemporary queer romance novel Star Shipped. Entertainment industry expectations, social media and online fandom engagement, a fake friendship road trip across the American southwest, this book has no shortage of good narrative hooks. A comfy and safe space of a romance novel, unfortunately the execution across the board hinders its great potential and results in a book that feels like it lacks a purpose or direction. One of my highly anticipated queer literature reads of 2026, this book wasn’t for me and was quite the disappointment at every turn despite it having good intentions and nice mental health representation.

Star Shipped follows television actor Simon Devereaux who’s attempting to depart from the popular long-running TV-show Out There whose simplistic and limited acting opportunities have left him feeling uninspired and artistically constrained. It doesn’t help that he’s spent the last seven years co-starring against Charlie Blake, a built and handsome man who has less impressive acting and an unprofessional history on set. With the impending end of his contract coming up and his move to New York for new opportunities, a poorly timed article that’s gone viral suggests that Simon’s end on the show may be attributed to past diva-like behavior or on-set conflicts with his co-star. While in damage control mode, the opportunity to accompany Charlie on a family emergency turned road trip becomes a convenient way to fake a friendship on social media. But as the two start to open up to each other and discuss their shared time on Out There, it soon becomes evident Charlie is not who Simon thought he was and suddenly his future end on the show may not be what he really wants after all.

If the above recap sounds compelling and interesting, you would not be alone as Star Shipped was a book I was really looking forward to reading. Cat Sebastian’s various time piece queer romance novels are quite popular, and I had my eye on her Midcentury NYC series for quite a while. While I’m not sure if Star Shipped was a misfire or Sebastian’s writing is simply not for me given how many positive reviews it has, I was severely disappointed by this book. While its narrative elements were great on paper, the execution across the board left a lot to be desired. The biggest issue I had with this book was it felt like there’s a complete lack of direction, story or sense of urgency to keep the reader’s interest, which is odd considering its base premise sounded great on its own. Coming in at just under four hundred pages, it felt like nothing of importance was happening. The plot felt non-existent while the characters were spending time together without having any development or shift. While the middle section of the book showed signs of life when Simon and Charlie were rewatching their show with newfound appreciation and connection, the rest of the book afterwards felt stagnant, the story ending in a very unsatisfying manner. I had already felt bored and apathetic with the book early-on but by the time it ended, it left me with a “what was the point of that?” sentiment, feeling like a waste of time. I understand that is a vibe kind of casual read, but it felt too low stakes to a fault. The tv-show storylines, acting careers, isolated feelings, strained family dynamics, everyone felt like wasted opportunities, like Sebastian had a loose idea for the book and just ran with it without planning how the narrative progresses.

Ordinarily, contemporary romance books don’t always need to have a strong or notable plot if the book features strong character development or romantic chemistry to carry it. Unfortunately, I also found Star Shipped to be quite lacking in these areas. The story pairs Simon and Charlie as co-stars on a seven-year-old show, yet their dynamics and relationship don’t feel like it portrays that at all. There are some nice reflections when they rewatch the show ep by ep, but the animosity feels like it’s forced and implied without enough context. Additionally, the book’s marketing blurb lists various tropes including enemies-to-lovers, opposite attract, forced proximity, and slow burn. In actuality, only the opposite attract trope feels adequately represented. Their initial relationship is maybe mild irritation at best and is a far cry from “enemies” in both a personal and professional setting. The forced proximity is a stretch as no one is forcing Simon and Charlie to go on a family trip together and they actively choose to spend more time together. And the book lacks strong development, exploration of their relationship, or pining to be considered a slow burn; they hook up very quickly in the first hundred pages and sort of lags after. While Simon and Charlie spend a lot of time together talking, I constantly felt like their conversations dragged and didn’t have much substance to it outside of discussions around anxiety and mental health. The mental health representation felt like an earnest attempt, but even that felt like a basic surface level exploration or playing the material too safe for fear of being upsetting or triggering.

To make matters worse, while purposely flawed, I can see many readers finding Simon frustrating to follow given his prissy and particular exterior persona especially when paired with Charlie’s golden retriever himbo energy. I personally liked Simon’s character conceptually, even though I found the actual handling of his characterization lacking. For me, Simon and Charlie chemistry never felt like it really clicked, the majority of their relationship revolving around setting healthy boundaries; this is a good example for a model relationship but can be quite dry to read about repeatedly. As the story progresses, the will-they-won’t-they progression comes off more as a they-will-but-why-aren’t-they note as the story struggles to come up with effective or plausible reasons to keep them apart. The concept and ideas of self-doubt, insecurities, and worries holding the characters back from admitting what they want can be effective, but Sebastian’s handling of it is heavy-handed to the point that it insults the characters’ internalized logic and reader’s awareness to be ignorant of what’s going on. I can see this being good for those looking for a healthy and safe reading experience, but for many, the romance and chemistry just isn’t there. Readers that enjoy spice will also be left a bit cold as it’s semi open-door, vague, yet referenced by both characters so many times for how brief they seem. I’m personally not someone that actively looks or cares about spice, but this one even left me disappointed by how casual and low stakes it’s written despite being meaningful to Simon.

To make matters worse, I found the book’s writing style to be very repetitive, pedestrian, and bland. Contemporary romance books do not need to have lyrical prose or deep introspective reflections to work, but this one felt particularly basic. Written in third person present tense solely from Simon’s point of view, so much of the book is written as “Simon does this, Simon does that, Simon thinks this, then he remembers that” to the point where the writing actively starts to detract and hinder the already lackluster story and character development. While I admit that third person present tense is one of my least favorite writing styles in fiction, that’s normally not a deal-breaker if the author switches up the phrasing, provides stronger ambiance, or breaks up the play-by-play descriptions with character reflections or memories. Star Shipped didn’t do that and felt incredibly generic on top of its already flat narrative material. 

While the dialogue wasn’t necessarily great, I found the character conversations fared much better and made the story more bearable in places, particularly the aforementioned middle section where Simon and Charlie rewatch their show. On another positive note, Star Shipped features quite a few text message chats and fandom discussions via discord message that I felt were very well done. The online discourse and fan speculations that close out a number of chapters were easily the best part of the book for me! I only wish that the book leaned heavier into that meta-aspect more or the show itself. Additionally, while the mental health representation was rather surface level, I can see a lot of readers finding it comforting to see it portrayed in a manner that is very accepting and supportive. As an introverted person that craves quiet reprieve away from the noise and hectic bustle of life, Simon’s homebody relaxation wants are a mood that’s great to see represented.

Despite thinking it “could be so good” on paper (see what I did there), unfortunately Star Shipped was a complete miss for me across the board. Though I could write an even longer essay analyzing the book’s weak individual aspects in more detail, the biggest and most disappointing sentiment is that this novel is simply bland and boring to read. Another review wrote that it could come off like a comforting therapy session which is an apt sentiment, but it lacks the character writing or plot to back it up. Sebastian is a very popular author in the queer literature community and perhaps her historical fiction set stories fare better, but this one simply didn’t work for me and felt inherently flawed from the get-go. I hate rating queer novels this low considering the factors already stacked against them and that Star Shipped isn’t an inherently offensive read, but as someone that reads a lot of queer romance novels, the fun concept is the only thing it really has going for it.