This is my least favorite of Sylvia Engdahl's books. The outcome is foreshadowed so much that there is no suspense about how it will turn out. The main characters are tw0-dimensional.
I liked some of the others (Paul, Kathy, Alicia) better than Melinda and Alex.

I found Melinda to be not very likable as a character, but still a solid book.

I got a copy of the 2006 hardcover edition with an absolutely crazy-sauce, cartoony cover that I adore. It's worth the cost of the book alone. It does not represent the book's contents though which are far more classic.

In her Afterward to this edition, the author notes she was surprised that aside from a few scientific updates the biggest changes that she had to edit for when updating her 1970 original for this edition were the consequences of late 20th century feminism. As she puts it, "modern women's outlook toward marriage and toward careers...have changed more than my views of space have."

Despite her updates, the book's relationships feel slightly old fashioned. The heroine unthinkingly lets her boyfriend push her around, her career dream is to be a teacher and the only other teacher we meet is also female, plus it's assumed that a man doing business in a foreign place must need a wife, or wife substitute, to serve as a 'hostess' at his side. That said, I shudder to think what the 1970 version must have had going on...and am somewhat fascinated to realize that those 1970s edition attitudes were what I lived through as a little girl. I don't think young women today have any grasp on how huge a revolution occurred in the generation just before them.

Those musings aside, this is a sweet book. It's truly a coming of age, new adult thing. The heroine on occasion is so dumb about her attitudes that you want to shake her. But I'm willing to give it a pass because all that can be new adult in reality.

The descriptions of life on Mars colony are very well done indeed. And it's exceptionally pleasant to read a science fiction novel where it's not a huge space opera, nobody has to save the world, the aliens are not coming, and the revolution is not nigh. It's ordinary life instead. Real, true feeling ordinary life.

I had trouble empathizing with Melinda. She just seemed too clueless, and spineless.

Melinda has her first fight with her fiance when she goes to Mars with her father. There she keeps putting her foot wrong by assuming everybody thinks Earth is better.

Journey Between Worlds is a serious sci-fi drama about a young woman who takes a journey to visit a colony on Mars. I think the thing I enjoyed the most about this book was that it really engaged me and made me think about what it would mean to leave Earth, what a settlement on Mars would be like, etc. In that way, it's an "ideas" story, and it's very grounded and attempts to be realistic. But the characters and plot aren't bad either. Though I read the updated edition, some aspects do feel old-fashioned, including the main character herself and some of the romance. (For example, at the start, Melinda plans to marry her high school boyfriend after one year of college!)

Anyway, I mostly picked this up because somehow I had no idea Sylvia Engdahl wrote fiction other than Enchantress from the Stars (a book I loved as a kid that probably deserves a re-read soon). Now I kind of want to read more book about Mars colony life.

I very honestly think this is a good read for everyone interested in space or not. It overall encompasses many parts of society whether you’re ion Mars or Earth. It can get a bit slow at times but it’s definitely something I didn’t want to put down a lot of the time!

It's been a LONG time since I've read a book that made me re-evaluate myself and my opinions. This book did just that. For that I'm grateful. 4.5 stars.