Heart of Iron by Ashley Poston
Series: Heart of Iron #1
Genre: Science Fiction
Release Date: 27th February 2018
Publisher: Balzer + Bray
Source: Publisher
Add it: Goodreads
Rating: 
Seventeen-year-old Ana is a scoundrel by nurture and an outlaw by nature. Found as a child drifting through space with a sentient android called D09, Ana was saved by a fearsome space captain and the grizzled crew she now calls family. But D09—one of the last remaining illegal Metals—has been glitching, and Ana will stop at nothing to find a way to fix him.
Ana’s desperate effort to save D09 leads her on a quest to steal the coordinates to a lost ship that could offer all the answers. But at the last moment, a spoiled Ironblood boy beats Ana to her prize. He has his own reasons for taking the coordinates, and he doesn’t care what he’ll sacrifice to keep them.
When everything goes wrong, she and the Ironblood end up as fugitives on the run. Now their entire kingdom is after them—and the coordinates—and not everyone wants them captured alive.
What they find in a lost corner of the universe will change all their lives—and unearth dangerous secrets. But when a darkness from Ana’s past returns, she must face an impossible choice: does she protect a kingdom that wants her dead or save the Metal boy she loves?
Heart of Iron was weeeeird, you guys. On the one hand, I enjoyed the space chase storyline and the action at the beginning. It did a great job of hooking me in. On the other, there was a weird romance that I’m unsure about, and then the plot got worse as the book went on. I have such mixed feelings about this book!
The romance was one part that really threw me. One of the main romances was M/M (and also interspecies but w/e) and I quite liked it aside from how rushed it was. It definitely needed more build up, but I liked both of the characters well enough to roll with it. The second romance was between a robot and a human, and I was kind of like ?!?! through most of it. I’m really not sure how to feel.
I didn’t realise this was an Anastasia retelling IN SPACE until part way through the book, because I pay no attention to synopses. The references to the original cartoon were well done, and I liked that my favourite character of all time – and my first childhood crush – showed up in the end. You probably all know who I’m talking about.
Heart of Iron did, however, start to drag towards the end. The last third was very meh, and I started to get bored, because it took a completely different direction to the first part of the book.
I might continue on with this series if I hear good things about the second book, but right now I’m not very invested in any of the characters or the plot.