 Popsugar Reading Challenge category: A self-published book.
Lucky Stars, by H. Claire Taylor. For a moment I thought I'd stumbled across a parallel-universe version of The Cosmic Turkey: a space comedy with an accidental captain, a misfit crew with a deadly first officer, and even an alien matchmaking service. No real mystery to any of that, of course: accidental leader and misfit crew are popular tropes, and the comedy potential of dating services is limitless. Except of course that the Turkey books are G-rated, while The Alice Luck Space Adventures are hilariously naughty. (The fact that The Star-Crossed Pelican's dating service is called LuckyStar probably amuses me more than it should.) Alice Luck is a young Texas woman with no job, $80,000 in college debt, a mostly-useless degree in animal husbandry, and a boyfriend who's annoyingly perfect. She gets recruited by aliens to work for their matchmaking service, which helps endangered alien species to breed. Her misfit crew includes Susy "Vel Machiavelli (the aforementioned deadly first officer), Dan Zone (a sort of human-armadillo hybrid who's the genius every SF book needs) Caid (holographic therapist), and the ship' computer, Allura, which makes every comment sound like it's narrating a porn video. The stakes are high: Alice and crew will either get rich, or be banished to to a miserable faraway planet. There are deadly enemies that Alice's employer conveniently forgot to warn them about. The innuendoes fly fast & furious, though mercifully we don't get all the details of alien sex. The plot is delightfully ludicrous, with a satisfying resolution as Alice discovers strengths she didn't know she had. The book is well-written and well-edited, exactly the opposite of the stereotype of self-published books - and it's exactly the kind of story traditional publishers are hesitant to take a chance on.
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