Landing the job of her dream in research and development at the Space Island Group (SIG), Samantha Gerris finds herself doing what she has always wanted to do and all with her feet firmly on the planet Earth. While others made SIG a career so that they could go into space, Sami was scared of flying even after meeting an almost perfect man who happened to be a pilot. Marriage and two kids later, Jack Bennett finally got his chance to go into space leaving Sami and the kids on Earth, then a tragic accident took Jack from his family. Finding out that both of her kids wanted to follow in their fathers steps and take a job on the Space Station/Space Resort, Samantha knew she could not sit by and watch the rest of her family leave her. Doing what she never thought she would ever do, with the fear of losing her kids stronger than the fear of traveling in space, Sami joined her kids in space. Now Sami will learn the Katarians have been a part of her work, her husbands work and now her children’s work on the space station for many, many years. With her knowledge and know-how, Sami may find common ground and even happiness again through an adventure that takes her to places she never expected to go.

The adventure of a lifetime, Sci-Fi, even romance, this book has such a run of everything. The writing style is easy to read and very descriptive, sometimes too much so. This book is good in story line, great character creation and the technology is comparable to any Star Trek. The terminology is not overused, so you don’t get bogged down trying to remember what each of the big words mean. The beginning of the book moved quite slowly though. The drag of the fist half of the book, while it was a sweet romance and the ground work for some of the adventure of the later parts, still left me wishing that some of it had been skipped all together. I enjoy a good romance, but this one really dragged for me and even though I liked the characters and was sad at the lose of Jack, I started to not care as much for them because it was taking so long to get to the point. The adventure was much better, a lot was packed into the remainder of the book and while I missed Jack, the connection with Gaelan was even better.

I read a lot of Science Fiction and often find that the story gets so bogged down by the science that the characters don't get fully developed. Thankfully, in the book "Beyond The Stars: Kataria" author Kelly Beltz manages to deliver a well balanced novel full of adventure, romance, and suspense with fleshed out characters that I actually cared about and related to.

Samantha Gerris is doing the one thing she swore she would never do, traveling into Space to assist with the completion of the space resort being built by the Space Island Group (SIG), the company she has worked for since she graduated from college. She spends the flight reflecting on the events that brought her to this point where she is facing her biggest fear and, before she knows it, she is at the space resort settling into her room.

Within a few days of her arrival at the resort there is an emergency and she ends up on an alien starship heading to the planet Kataria. On the way she visits new worlds, faces dangerous situations, falls in love and comes to realize that her fears have been holding her back, something she plans to never let happen again.

I really enjoyed this book and had a hard time putting it down. It had all the elements of a good romance novel without the graphic love scenes plus, the space technology was plausible and the characters, alien and human alike, were believable. I also appreciated the little details the author included as they helped me relate more to the characters and kept me engaged in the story. I am looking forward to the next book in the series and hope Ms. Beltz doesn't keep me waiting too long as the anticipation just might kill me!