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Obviously this is a very different kind of story than Valley of the Dolls and was written with a pulpy sci-fi tone that is more fun and fluffy than her dark adult portraits of glamour and romance. However, I found it just as engaging and hard to put down as her more renowned bestseller. Janet's character, while simple minded and immature, is very relatable and easy to empathize with as she is stuck in a sort of quarter life crisis brought on by rigid societal expectations of women and an unsupportive network of loved ones. She is thrown from a mediocre, streamlined existence into a supernatural situation where she is even more dramatically the odd one out and is literally put on trial to prove her worth. That's a hell of a self esteem nightmare!

The thin nightie cover and subtitle "A love story" is fairly misleading to the real direction and content of the story which is more of a chick version of Enemy Mine (1985) where a simple human and an alien have to overcome their differences to survive. Yargo himself and the shallow chemistry Janet perceives between the two of them is really just tacked on towards the end and it feels uncomfortably forced.

Like Valley of the Dolls, the more interesting relationship is the one between the women of the book. Sasau was a total badass who was raised without a complex range of emotion so she's cool headed and practical under extreme pressure. And by extreme pressure I mean she was almost publicly raped by a caged, violent man-bee hybrid and she kept a poker face and when she later got her arm torn off by the same creature she felt bad about shedding a couple of tears of pain. Because of her physical perfection, intelligence and resilience, she is an intimidating and clashing contrast to Janet's awkward, weak willed moodiness at first. Sasau has no interest or patience in being Janet's guide on planet Yargo because she feels she is too superior to connect with her as an equal. Janet finds Sasau's coldness offputting and insensitive so she too has misgivings about working together. However after a mission to Mars gone horribly wrong the two find common ground and compassion that goes beyond the boundaries of their separate cultures and evolution. So if there was any "love story" in this book it was the friendship between them.

This is a fast, fun read that I can faithfully recommend to even reluctant sci-fi readers. It's not too complex but there are some great characters and ideas being exchanged about what makes for a utopia, what place love and family should have in society, what pursuits should be prioritized in life, living for yourself vs. the greater good of mankind and finding who you are.