Buckle up! Amie Kaufman and Meagan Spooner are back with their best collaboration yet.

Warning: Spoilers for book one in the duology, Unearthed, below. Proceed with caution!

Undying is the thrill ride of a sequel to last year’s Unearthed and it’s about to rock your world!

Mia and Jules thought they were unlocking the secrets of an ancient alien race when they entered the Undying temple on Gaia, but after being kidnapped and nearly killed several times over, they’ve realized an even more horrific truth: The extinct race of “aliens” they sought are still very much alive, and they appear to be human. Last we saw the two, they were tucked in the corner of the recently launched Undying spaceship, shocked and helpless.

Undying picks up shortly after as Mia and Jules stow away in the nooks and crannies of the Undying spacecraft, desperately looking for a way to contact Earth and warn them about the invasion. Soon, the two are running for their lives and hurtling back to Earth in a seemingly impossible race against the clock and an Undying team who knows what they’re up to. With few resources and even fewer people willing to trust a scavenger and the son of a disgraced mad scientist, they’ll need make a mad dash across Europe and convince the oblivious citizens of Earth that they’re actually in danger before it’s too late.

With the facts of this future world and the Undying mythos firmly solidified in Unearthed, its sequel is able to dive straight into the action at a breakneck pace. Mia and Jules are on a mission from page one and things get twistier with every chapter as the two discover the aliens’ mission, their motivation, and their terrifying plans for humankind. I struggled with the pacing in book one, but book two parsed its downtime out much more carefully to create a plot rhythm that sucked me right in. I needed to know how what the Undying were really after and how Mia and Jules could possibly stop them.

The novel introduces us to a few much-needed new characters. They really expanded the character development beyond the relationship between Jules and Mia. My personal favorite is Jules’ cousin Neal– he’s mentioned often in Unearthed, but this is the first time we truly see him in action. He and Jules may be like brothers, but Jules is definitely the straight man to Neal’s humorously troublemaking (and also maybe life-saving) ways. We also meet Dex and Atlanta, an Undying pair that the three others find themselves tangled up with despite their dueling missions. Even characters met briefly along the way lend quite a bit of depth to the story as our main characters examine the state of the world around them.

As far as Jules and Mia go, the character carefully ride the line between tense and romantic as they push and pull at their feelings for each other. Jules is ever the optimist, believing that if they make it through this, they can make it through anything. But Mia is a realist who believes that once they save the world– if they can save the world,– their two very different lifestyles and responsibilities will tear them apart. It’s definitely an intriguing element, but I appreciated that Kaufman and Spooner focused much more of their attention on the impending doom of an alien invasion.

I wasn’t quite sure what to expect from the end of this novel, but I certainly wasn’t disappointed! Everything the story has shown us so far weaves together for jaw-dropping reveals in the conclusion. It also opens up the world of the novels to new possibilities, despite the conclusion of Mia and Jules’ story. And hey, if Amie Kaufman and Meagan Spooner keep crushing it with wild space adventures, we’re sure going to keep reading them!

RATING: 4.5 OUT OF 5 STARS

Undying (Unearthed #2) hits shelves on January 22, 2019. You can preorder your copy now via Amazon!

Trapped aboard the Undying’s ancient spaceship and reeling from what they’ve learned there, scavenger Mia and academic Jules are plunged into a desperate race to warn their home planet of the danger humanity’s greed has unleashed. From the mountains of Spain to the streets of Prague, the sequel to Unearthed is a white-knuckle ride that will send readers hurtling back to earth, and leave them breathless until the last page.

The earth’s fate rests in Mia and Jules’s hands in the epic conclusion to New York Times best-selling authors Amie Kaufman and Meagan Spooner’s tomb-raiding sci-fi duology.