Review: Voyagers
- amiller8979
- 2 hours ago
- 2 min read
Amber Miller
June 30, 2026
by Meg Charlton
June 16, 2026
Harper
ISBN: 9780063441217
320 pages
Science Fiction, Literary Fiction
A touching and engaging novel about memory, connection, and belief. My only complaint is that it ended before Alex and Ana reconnect with Allen.
Summary: When the Signal—a mysterious transmission pulsing from the edge of the solar system— arrives, the world changes overnight. Planes are grounded, satellites fail, and speculation abounds. With many believing this could be first contact with extraterrestrial life, humanity holds its breath. But for Alex, a thirtysomething lawyer who’s spent years distancing himself from the unexplainable, the Signal feels deeply personal—the opening of an old wound.
Decades ago, Alex and a girl named Ana both vanished for thirty-six hours while on vacation near Palm Springs. When they returned, dazed but unharmed, the six-year-olds’ account of their experience had all the hallmarks of an alien abduction. The media frenzy that followed made them famous, and the long months of child stardom —talk shows and sitcom cameos —forged a seemingly unbreakable bond between them—until the mystery behind their disappearance began to tear them apart.
Now, with the world on edge and the Signal growing stronger, Alex is drawn back to the one person who might have answers. Ana—now a professional advocate for experiencers of extraterrestrial contact—is leading a retreat near Palm Springs, a stone’s throw from the site of their childhood disappearance. As the former best friends tentatively reunite, what starts as a quest to confront the reality of their original experience becomes a larger reckoning with friendship, faith, family, and truth itself—what it means to see the stories we tell ourselves for what they really are.
Voyagers is a thrillingly original and brilliantly ambitious literary debut about friendship at the end of the world. In the words of author Meg Charlton, "aliens are the hook in Voyagers, but the heart of my novel is the connection between these two very lonely people, who have been there for each other in a way that no one else has."