SOLVED. YA Scifi Speed of Light Travel w/ father/daughter dynamics [s]

[Jessica]

Paperback ya scifi novel I read as a young teen back in the mid 90s.

A young woman travels with a group of people on a ship that reaches near lightspeeds and time of course dilates for those on board the ship. I'm fuzzy on what happens when she gets back.
I know there were lots of father/daughter dynamics as I think the only family member she left behind was her father.
I know she encountered some sort of alien race that were glowy white....orbs? Maybe?

[Cheryl]

Hmm. Do you have any sense of whether the author was famous or not? Do you read a lot of scifi?

[Jessica]

Probably not a famous author. I think it was one of those bargain paperbacks you can find at the grocery store or similar.

I read tons of scifi. I read an even larger amount around age 13-15. That would have been around 97-99. I don't think the book was very old. Late 80s for a publication date at the oldest, maybe?

I think the cover had a lot of orange, yellow, and pink in it?

[Andria]

The Starlight Crystal?

[Jessica]

I think that's it! I can't believe it's Christopher Pike though. I didn't remember him writing scifi. It makes sense. I was reading Pike at that age too. Thank you so much!

[Andria]

You're welcome! He didn't write very much scifi. There's one, maybe two others besides this one and the rest are his usual supernatural/horror fare.