Read Gallo
TO LIVE WITH BALANCE
L.J. LONGO’S EDITORIAL ASSESSMENT
TO LIVE WITH BALANCE
LOG LINE
BLURB
A century after humanity’s global unity was broken by environmental collapse and a flight to outer space, the Atmospheric Rebalancing Initiative is a contest to find the next generation of genius engineers. A.R.I. challenges students to invent a technology that will liberate earth-bound cities from the domes that have protected them from the ravages of nature. Each sector, from the clockwork-obsessed Albion to the underwater Edo, to the military-minded Prussia, is sending its best to compete.
And sixteen-year-old Professor? She’s from Dockside, a semi-legal sector known for smuggling, looting ruins, and being left to die. Her invention, the Equilibrium Net, could shape the future of planetary travel if she can stay in the contest long enough.
The competition is richer, cleaner, better connected and determined to break her spirit, her tech, or both. As each round grows more extreme, Professor must navigate manipulation, institutional contempt, and most damaging of all, her own family’s attempts to help her win through sabotage and blackmail. As the community that raised her turns against her, Professor learns the A.R.I. represents Earth’s last chance to survive as a living planet and not be turned into a heritage site by the majority who now live in orbit.
If she wins, she could reunite the world.
If she fails, she proves Earth’s future is in a museum case.
A teen inventor from a community of smugglers and saboteurs enters a contest to improve the planet’s failing environmental domes—and to remind the off-world majority that the Earth isn’t a relic yet.
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Fiction. Science Fiction. YA Cli-Fi
To Live With
Balance
By Read Gallo
Genre/ Category:
Target Audience:
Market Trends:
YA and Adult Sci-Fi readers
Cli-Fi, STEM Heroine, Community
If the post-environmental collapse of Gearbreakers and The Ones We’re Meant to Find blended with the big heart and low stakes of Becky Chambers or TJ Kune.
Comp Titles:
Market Gap:
Cozy Sci-Fi
Blue-Collar Sci-fi with complex (not toxic) family ties.
Stem Heroine who is not a loner or a genius and remains grounded to her roots while chasing more.
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Target Audience
YA Readers, especially
Adult Sci-Fi readers who are:
~ Fatigued by dystopia
~ Looking for climate optimism
~ seeking cozy vibes
~ those navigating the competitive system of college admission
~ teen who are supported by a family, but not in the way that need/ want. This is a family that finds itself, Encanto style.
~ STEM girls, tired of seeing genius, quirky, loners with no social skills
Readers from tight-knit communites
~ will recognize the isolation of ambition
~ resonate with the tension between family obligation and leaving home
(people from ethnic enclaves, poor rural/ urban zones)
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Market Trends
Competent MC/ STEM Girl
Cli-Fi / Cozy Science Fiction
Practical and optimistic about the future, ala Becky Chambers. While set after a global environmental collapse, To Live with Balance emphasizes character, relationships, and hope as characters compete, not for survival, but to design a technology that will protect and reconnect the planet.
The MC, Professor, builds, fixes, and thinks her way to success, ala, The Martian. She’s passionate, strategic, and emotional. NOT neurotic or awkward.
Multicultural Futurism
Community-Bonds
Stories that are pro-family/ anti-isolation are remerging, especially ones centered around traditional, lower-class families, like Professor’s.
Humans from various cultures working towards unity on a global scale rather than a homegenous distopia, ala “Star Trek”, is coming back.
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Comp Titles
Gearbreakers
by Zoe Hana Mikuta (2021)
Today Tonight Tomorrow
by Rachel Lynn Solomon (2021)
Becky Chambers:
Counting Down with You
by Tashie Bhuiyan (2021)
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Cozy YA Cli-Fi with girl inventors: Uplifting, sci-fi remains underrepresented in YA
Authentic Family Dynamics: Readers exhausted by orphaned/isolated and/or elite protagonists
Market Gaps Filled by
To Live with Balance
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Editorial Assessment
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The novel is highly immersive and deeply emotional. The 1st person narrator is brilliant, but naive, has a strange and distinct voice from the rest of the cast of characters (which is quite large). Pacing is very fast due to short chapters and the narrator’s tendency to collapse time when she determines she is boring the reader. Worldbuilding is natural, but at times repetitive. Readability is generally easy, but frequent invented words might throw off readers, unused to such immersive sci-fi. Handles most themes well and the moments were it felt heavy-handed were limited to two characters (see character dev.)
Writing Style
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Editorial Assessment
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This story has a lot of characters and most of them go through a complete arc (even is that arc is just contestant to loser; each defeat feels witnessed and earned). Professor as the main character has the biggest arcs:
First, she has a fun story where she begins protected from the world’s opinion of her people, Dockside. As she competes, she learns Dockside is looked-down on as lower-class vagabonds and is ashamed. This doesn’t last long and she ends up being proud of her sector.
Second, Professor learns to communicate with her family what she needs from them, or rather, what she wants from them. She also learns in the end that her family has been giving her the support she needs and she was too naive to realize it.
Finally, Professor has a realization where she accepts that her contribution to the research is already enough; she doesn’t have to win. Even if she not accepted into the elite university, her invention will continue on and be useful to the mission. There’s a wonderful humanism in this victory through unity of purpose.
Character Dev
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Editorial Assessment
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Family: The four members of Professor’s family each go through arcs similar to Professor’s third arc in that they learn to listen and to support the way their loved one wants and needs. These four curb their criminal instincts and bend over backwards to get their girl this opportunity that they simply don’t understand. Their principles and personal beliefs are tested and ultimately shifted, briefly, to better serve the family’s goals. It’s the Addams family… In Space
Contestants: There are over a dozen finalists in this contest and only two of them feel like straight symbols and not characters, which is quite a feat considering how easy it would be for this story to reduce the large cast into tropes. The two who suffer this treatment are a military elite from Prussia and an artistic bohemian from Vien, a sector that has split from Prussia. Prussia prioritized safety and the rigid traditions. Vien prizes freedom and innovation. Under the stress test, their prototypes break in symbolically obvious ways Prussia snaps under the pressure, Vien unravels when it’s stretched too much. This theme feels a bit heavy handed, but given that it’s only two minor characters in a cast of many if is not too distracting.
Character Dev
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Editorial Assessment
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In many ways, the plot is the simplest element in this novel.
Professor competes in the contest, her family tries to cheat to help her ‘even the playing field’ and compete against richer and better connected competitors. Professor fights her family’s attempts at every stage until the very last when she realizes if her invention performs as well as all the others and too many survive the timed test, she will be excluded purposefully. She wins when her mother stresses all the prototypes by targeting their weaknesses and applying equal pressure to all the others ensuring that the devices fail rather than survive the timed test.
Plot
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Line Edit Goals:
The section I’m focusing on is early on in the contest, around when Professor first realizes her family’s interference is going to cause problems.
My goals in this section were to double-check clarity, dialogue, atmosphere, and sentence structure. I also had an eye out for world-building details, but I was more or less unconcerned with grammar and mechanics. Professor as a character does not speak or write well, so I was much more concerned with whether or not she was clear and assumed errors were part of her voice.
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Line Edit: Before 1
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Line Edit: Before 2
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Line Edit: During 1
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Line Edit: During 1
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Line Edit: After
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Line Edit: After
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Target Audience: YA Readers, Adult Sci-Fi Readers (esp, hopepunk/ cozy speculative fans)
Marketing Channels:
Broadly this is well-suited for book clubs (especially ones with parents and teens) as it offers many opportunities for conversations about climate justice, multiculturalism, and family support.
It should also be pitched to educational markets and librarian conferences because it’s perfect for classroom discussion.
Publicity Tactics:
This book is well situated to capture the imaginations of people on Booktok due to it’s relevant message not only about climate change, but family, community, and hope. The narrator’s voice is also funny and sound-bitey; the author should be encouraged to share that sassy POV online.
The book and author should appear on:
Marketing / Publicity Plan
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Publicity Channels Cont.
Library/ book tour/events should be arranged with other cli-fi books ideally around Earth Month.
Would love to get this books some attention from Becky Chambers. Recommended on her newsletter, or reviewed by her. If nothing else, every Goodreads that lists a Becky Chambers, should have this book.
Awards and Lists to Pursue:
The Author should talk about:
Marketing / Publicity Plan
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Core Brand Identity
“Grease under your nails and family at your back.”
For any banners, social media the visual style should be reclaimed parts, but fused and functional. The rust is cleaned, the pieces are not falling apart. Details are cute, slightly coastal, and semi-feral.
Target audience appeal:
The lack of polish in these materials will encourage fans of the books to create their own homemade art as well as signal the spirit of the characters who scavenge, rebuild, and repair rather than discard and replace.
To Live With
Balance
By Read Gallo
Conclusion and Justification for selecting this book:
The 2025/26 YA market continues to be driven by speculative fiction, with rising demand for diverse, STEM-centered, and hopeful narratives. As environmental concerns remain front of mind and the cozy subgenre flourishes, readers are gravitating toward optimistic cli-fi and hopepunk stories.
To Live with Balance taps directly into this trend. The Professor is a relatable heroine competing for a place at an elite college, driven by ambition but grounded in her working-class, criminal-adjacent community. Her family isn’t toxic or idealized—just complicated, loving, and real. The bittersweet tension between her dreams and her deep-rooted loyalty to home adds emotional richness.
This is a smart, heartfelt story with a fresh voice—poised to capture both hearts and imaginations.
Thanks
L.J. Longo
ljlongo.com
Email:
ljlongo@hotmail.com
Website: