Love Galaxy (The Imperial Broadcasts Book 1) by Sierra Branham
Genres: Adult, Queer Protagonists, Sci Fi
Representation: Autistic-coded bisexual MC, lesbian MC, F/F, minor nonbinary character, queernorm world
PoV: Third-person, past-tense; dual PoVs
Published on: 21st April 2026
ISBN: 9780756420420
Goodreads
A romantic science fiction thriller in which a young woman from a dead-end planet gets cast on a reality TV show to compete for the hand of the prince—or princess. But not everyone is there for the right reasons…
Smart, sexy, compulsively readable and fun, this is for fans of Everina Maxwell's Winter's Orbit and Arkady Martine's A Memory Called Empire
Temmi, a young trash collector stuck in a dead-end job on a garbage planet, finds herself with a golden ticket she never the opportunity to be cast on an interstellar dating show starring the brother and sister heirs to the galactic empire. Through diplomatic challenges and dramatized dates, twenty-four women will compete to marry the prince and princess—and to win the dynasty’s favor for their home planet.
Temmi may have been hand-picked to date the quiet, bookish prince, who is immediately taken by her brash personality and their shared passion for the sciences. But she can’t seem to keep away from the princess—and even though she’s strictly off-limits, their chemistry is undeniable.
But when contestants start turning up dead, whispers begin to circulate that some competitors might be harboring anti-imperialist motivations—Temmi among them. And suddenly it’s clear that so much more than feelings are at stake.
In fact, very few of the participants of Love Galaxy have come on the show to find love.
Sexy, snarky, and revolutionary, this fast-paced thrill ride will hook lovers of reality TV, fans of thoughtful sci-fi, and anyone who lives for drama.
I received this book for free from the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.
Highlights
~can we assassinate the ex-boyfriend actually
~surprise dystopia!
~bad and stupid worldbuilding
Hmmmmmmmmmmmmm.
Love Galaxy is incredibly compelling; the characters leap off the page, and my gods is Branham a genius at getting us emotionally invested! I devoured this book in a day, absolutely glued to the pages, because every other second Branham was yanking my heartstrings around, making me furious or scared or breathless on Temmi’s behalf. I did not expect to be nearly so invested in a story about a dating show, but Branham had me locked in after one chapter.
(It’s a very emotional first chapter, what can I say?)
What you immediately need to know, though, is that this is NOT a sweet fluffy sci fi romance about a dating show. I mean, it is, but the book is also flirting with critiquing colonialism and the military industrial complex and totalitarianism, with delving into poverty and privilege. The more pages you turn, the darker things get; there’s murder, torture, execution, all on-page.
I think this is the book’s weakest aspect/worst decision, trying to have it both ways; to be a feel-good romance AND a dystopia. Because the heavier topics made it impossible to suspend my disbelief the way Love Galaxy needed me to – because to be blunt, the worldbuilding is a trainwreck. If this had stayed light and fluffy, stayed solidly a romance, I could have averted my eyes from how ridiculous this all is – I will accept much more hand-wavey (or outright bonkers) worldbuilding from a romance than I will from sci fi that wants me to take it seriously. And Love Galaxy didn’t come close to meeting any reasonable standard for the latter.
The level of technology makes no sense; we’re specifically told the empire doesn’t have the tech for instantaneous transmissions, but also everyone in this multi-galaxy empire is watching the show at the same time??? How, when it’ll take light-years for each episode to reach the further-out planets? Someone is tortured for a confession, but we can create deep-fakes in 2026; why isn’t that an option in this far-distant future? If it’s been centuries upon centuries, why isn’t this human civilisation strange to me; culturally it’s like nothing at all has changed from the world I know, which is ridiculous.
There’s also a frankly rude (because if you are asking people to buy your story you should put some actual effort into writing it) LACK of very necessary worldbuilding. I presumed, going into Love Galaxy, that there was going to be some in-universe justification for IMPERIAL SPOUSES being selected via dating show. I figured that with the advanced knowledge/tech of the future, all the contestants would have been analysed/screened/whatever to make sure they all had personalities and sexual preferences and politics etc that were compatible with a) the prince/princess and b) the imperial family’s agenda. I thought it was likely that all the contestants would be people the heirs already knew. But…no. None of that. Meaning: you are, actually, asking the imperial heirs to choose the FUTURE EMPRESS in 8 weeks. Out of a bunch of people they don’t know. Whom they cannot have real conversations with because the cameras are always rolling, and none of whom have been pre-screened for compatibility – despite divorce being an absolute no-no. And before you ask, no, we’re never told that the imperial spouse/s are decorative, so as far as we know, whoever gets selected VIA DATING SHOW is going to have god-like power over the lives of trillions of people. That…is not an even vaguely sane way of running an intergalactic empire!
This all extra annoys me because it wouldn’t have been hard to come up with a plausible explanation for it all – just say it’s religious! Say the gods have to pick/approve the imperial spouses; say the contestants were all born under the appropriate holy stars or whatever; say it’s a religious rule that the contestants and prince/princess can’t meet before the ‘ritual courtship’ (aka the show) starts. That’s literally all you needed to make it believable. Why was not even that bare minimum of effort put in to the premise??? I came up with that in five seconds. Come on.
The moment you start poking things here, Love Galaxy falls apart, in small ways as well as big ones. For example, we learn that all footage of the reigning empress’ season of the show (when she was picking her spouse) is gone, wiped from the internet. But… Shouldn’t there be a whole generation of people still alive who watched it in real time, as it was airing? The show itself is supposed to be powerful propaganda for fostering a sense of togetherness throughout the empire, but many of the choices and visuals of it seem designed to do the opposite – when a contestant is sent home, the graphic revealing that is a map of the planets the contestants come from, and the planet of the contestant being sent home goes dark. As a visual, doesn’t that read as a rejection or failure of the planet? Which is hardly going to make people from that planet feel valued by the empire??? The bad guys’ machinations hinge on things no reasonable person would bet on, like one person keeping an illegal gift that could kill her if it gets damaged – something it is believable that this person keeps, but which MANY people would immediately get rid of. Why not just plant it on her after the fact??? Etc.
Pretty much all of the high-stakes plot hinges on the empress, on decisions she made before the book started, and absolutely none of them make sense. I’ve tried to keep things as vague as possible, but spoilers under the cut. View Spoiler »
There are some things the book does really well: I massively appreciated the honest depiction of poverty, of the awfulness of Temi’s situation and how all poverty comes down to institutionalised bs. There’s a nice middle-finger to anyone who wants to sneer at poor people for their coping mechanisms; pretty much everyone on Temmi’s planet drinks heavily and the story doesn’t shame them for it, instead asks the reader what else you’d like people to do when they’re trapped in a hellscape richer people made? The romance is very tropey, but I also found it convincing; Spie is not necessarily the nicest person, and faces some harsh truths and undergoes real growth over the course of the book. The bird-watching scene made my heart melt. The not-exactly love triangle was mildly annoying, but again, I found it convincing. I loved Temmi, who is very clearly autistic-coded (see how she needs to wear earbuds semi-constantly because aural stimulation can easily be too much for her) and swears almost as much as I do; she is completely useless at the intrigue or murder investigation parts of the plot, and yes, of course she is. She flailed like a normal person would flail, being tossed into this bonkers situation, and I really appreciated that about her. The twist of who the murderer was was phenomenal; my jaw hit the floor. From the first chapter on, there was never a moment when I was not emotionally invested; Branham is really good at making us feel for her characters.
But Love Galaxy doesn’t come close to achieving what it wants to achieve, being what it wants to be. Possibly it didn’t know what it wanted to be, and that’s why the romance/dating show part is so much stronger than the Hunger Games-esque part – the latter feels incredibly tacked-on, as if the first draft was just a romance, and only near the final pass was the dystopia aspect sprinkled in, rather than being fully written in. Love Galaxy wants to eat its cake and have it too, to be a dating show but get credit for being SeriousTM as well, and it doesn’t commit to the heavier stuff enough to pull it off. Most of the book only pays quick, shallow lip- service to the whole concept of Empire being a bad thing, brief comments and throwaway lines to remind you that colonialism is a thing and democracy is important, etc. The last 10-15% of the book, after the murderer is revealed, very abruptly shifts from dating show to giving us false imprisonment and torture and strapping an innocent down for lethal injection, and it’s jarring and rushed. The tone isn’t convincing, like the book wants to deal with awful things while remaining light and brisk, and it doesn’t work.
(There’s also nothing to tell you that it’s the start of a series, not a standalone. Publishers, STOP FUCKING DOING THIS. Put it in the blurb, put it on the title page, that this is book one of a series! I am happy to pick up a series opener, but I need to know that’s what it is! If I go in with the expectations of a standalone, it screws with the reading experience. STOP IT.)
Love Galaxy is a fast, easy, addictive read, but it’s not a great book. And it’s difficult to know who to recommend it to; obviously you need to be far less bothered by stupid worldbuilding than me, but if you’re in it for the romance you’re going to be disappointed, and if you’re in it for the politics/dystopia stuff you…will still be disappointed. If you needed something easy to read for a long stretch in a train or plane this could do the trick, maybe; if you’re just killing time, and can put it down when you reach your destination, never to think about it again? It’s a popcorn read, the same quality level as a b-list action movie. If that’s your thing, go for it.
Me? I definitely won’t be picking up the sequel.
I was curious about this book, since I have a soft spot for reality tv and heard about the autistic rep, but it doesn’t sound worth my time. It’s a shame because I think you can do a lot narratively with a reality tv show setting.
Oh, do you have any recs for good reality tv show books? That are SFF? I was trying to think of some and came up blank, but that’s not my usual niche!
I do!
Nyxia by Scott Reintgen has a reality TV subplot. The main plot concerns kids traveling to an alien planet, learning to use a new technology and competing for rankings. Their activities are filmed and beamed back to Earth, with editing on the company’s part of course. This element is dropped after book 1 when they make it to the alien planet and the focus shifts from competition to political dealings.
The Tinkered Starsong series is about alien American Idol or the Voice, though instead of solo acts it’s boybands for lack of a better term. I think this series is great, although the romantic subplot kind of takes over book 2 and especially 3. But I loved seeing the alien cultures clash, and the found family feels earned in a way many ff books don’t.
The Snowglobe duology features a domed city where everyone is a reality TV star, and everyone outside the city watches in fascination. The main character is a girl from outside Snowglobe who is the spitting image of the city’s most popular reality star. When the starlet dies, the MC gets dragged into Snowglobe to assume her role. I really liked this duology and felt it did a good job balancing various YA book tropes while doing something new with them.
Finally, Tune in Tomorrow by Randee Dawn is about the making of a reality TV show, except this show stars ordinary humans and is broadcasted to the hidden magical world. It’s a comedy story that I remember being cute and readable, but not as interesting as the other books I recced.
I could tell just from the summary that it wasn’t my kind of book, but I didn’t expect it to have that many problems. Trying to tackle heavy, difficult topics and only succeeding at shallow interpretations is a common trap, especially when it comes to colonialism and peoples’ rights, or lack thereof.
As a side note, cosmic horror and reality tv is one genre-mashup I’d love to see. How do you manage to keep the cast and crew safe if you can’t even tell what’s real and reality itself is out to lunch? Could be a fun premise.
HARD agree, I’d love to see cosmic horror + reality tv! I’ve seen a few books that had those ghost-hunter shows encountering real ghosts/demons, but that’s not nearly as interesting imo.