Girlfriend on Mars

January 1, 2023

Amber Kivinen is competing on a reality TV show with a difference: she wants to win one of two seats on the first human mission to Mars, sponsored by billionaire Geoff Task. That means leaving behind Adam, her puzzled boyfriend of 14 years. This debut novel from acclaimed Canadian short story writer Willis is based on a short story that has been optioned for film.

Copyright 2023 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

May 1, 2023
Amber Kivinen is going to Mars! She just has to win a game show first. Amber and Kevin Watkins have known each other since second grade and have been going out since they were 17. When they left their hometown of Thunder Bay, Ontario, to move to Vancouver, it was supposed to be for brighter horizons--an escape from their oppressive home lives and a chance to pursue their dreams. Ten years later, those dreams seem to have stalled out. Kevin's ambition to be a screenwriter only lasted one semester in film school, and in spite of her master's degree in environmental science, Amber is working as a receptionist. To supplement their incomes Amber and Kevin also run a small-scale hydroponic marijuana farm out of their basement apartment and, inevitably, partake fairly heavily of their product. For Kevin this life seems an ideal fit; he is perfectly content to go nowhere as long as he and Amber are "going nowhere together." Amber, however, who was on track to become an Olympic gymnast before a shoulder injury sidelined her, has nowhere to channel the energy that propelled her to athletic greatness except into a cycle of self-destructive flirtations. That is, until she hears about the MarsNow mission and the attendant game show, a "Survivor-meets-Star-Trek amalgam," in which the two winners--one man and one woman--will receive one-way tickets to Mars as the first Marsonauts in billionaire tech guru Geoff Task's settlement. Seemingly against all odds, Amber is chosen to appear on the show; then, as 12 grueling weeks of challenges winnow down the competitors, it becomes a real possibility that she might win, leaving Earth, and Kevin, behind forever. Part disaffected-slacker rom-com, part social satire, part wistful end-of-the-world eulogy for ordinary, unscripted love, this novel veers close to the kind of wearying cynicism and late-stage capitalist master-villainy that would make its conceit feel familiar. Yet again and again the novel saves itself from this fate by the very real hope at the heart of its main characters' binary orbit around each other--that love may be enough after all; if not to save them, then at least to make sure they will not be forgotten. Winsome, sweet, and apocalyptic--a perfect blend for the end of days.

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May 8, 2023
Willis braids reality television and the climate crisis with billionaire-sponsored space travel in her breezy speculative debut. Amber Kivinen and Kevin Watkins, both 31, have been dating since they were teens, and they now run a marijuana-growing business out of their Vancouver apartment. In Kevin’s view, they’ve “committed to going nowhere,” so he’s surprised when Amber decides to participate in a reality television program, “a Survivor-meets-Star Trek amalgam,” where two winners will be rocketed to Mars. Amber’s facility with hydroponics makes her well suited for the MarsNow mission, the brainchild of billionaire Geoff Task, a combination Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk, whom Kevin describes as “slim and pale, with a regal neck only a guillotine could love.” As Amber advances further in the competition she begins to fall for hunky Adam, who, as the child of Orthodox Jewish settlers in the West Bank, can relate to Amber’s conservative Christian upbringing. Kevin, likewise, begins a fledgling relationship with the couple’s friend Bronwyn, a white woman who wears her hair in dreadlocks. Willis keeps up a light tone and a fast pace even while getting deep into the science behind the Mars voyage, and her satire yields plenty of clever insights on celebrity culture. Readers are in for a treat.

May 1, 2023

DEBUT In Willis's first novel, Kevin Watkins is in love with his girlfriend Amber Kivinen, whom he's been with since high school. He believes she feels the same contentedness that he does, but their relationship starts to stagnate, and Amber begins to stray emotionally and physically. Her discontent leads her to secretly apply to be on a new reality TV show called MarsNow. Readers are launched into the fabricated world of reality TV in chapters narrated by Amber, while chapters narrated by Kevin reveal his rapidly constricting world, as he has decided not to leave the house unless Amber gets kicked off the show. The alternating chapters slowly reveal the backgrounds and motivations of both Kevin and Amber (Willis doesn't shy away from showing their uglier sides but keeps them sympathetic); meanwhile the narrative perfectly skewers reality TV shows. VERDICT A fresh take on the break-up narrative, mixed with the existential angst of today's world. Willis (author of two short story collections, including The Dark and Other Love Stories) explores many subthemes that will ring true, particularly for millennial readers.--Kristen Stewart

Copyright 2023 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from May 1, 2023
A young Canadian couple finds their love put to the test when one of them joins a reality show on which the two winners will become the first humans not only to set foot on Mars but to live there. Mars! Kevin Watkins is gobsmacked when his high-school sweetheart, Amber Kivinen, tells him she's one of two dozen finalists for MarsNow. In their thirties, growing and selling weed from their Vancouver apartment, Kevin and Amber seem happy, at least in Kevin's eyes. Having given up any ambitions of his own, Kevin is forced to watch Amber compete with contestants from around the world and fall for a handsome Israeli. Kevin's own world shrinks as Amber's expands. He stops leaving the apartment, his only human contact reduced to a fellow stoner pal who comes by to watch MarsNow with him, the guy who delivers his groceries, and an attractive customer with whom he starts hooking up. For her part, Amber befriends her charismatic novelist roommate and finds ways to game the system, becoming a popular figure with the public until a clever bit of editing threatens to turn her into a villain. Both satirical and sobering, Willis' gimlet-eyed debut spares no one, skewering both apathy and misplaced ambition while keeping the pages turning at a furious pace.

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