SOLVED. YA Sci-Fi. Spaceship salvager finds girl in stasis within a tear of fabric of space, becomes part of team that fights spacefaring plant-based hivemind that takes over other organisms & replaces your eyes w flowers. Read around 2016-2019. [s]

[Steph]

That is honestly about as much as I remember, but that should hopefully be enough info. Read this no less than 2-4 years ago.

[Dana]

Southern Reach Trilogy?

[Kris]

Steph, is this book for adults or teens?

[Kris]

Link for Dana's suggestion: Southern Reach series by
Jeff VanderMeer - the first book is Annihilation

[Steph]

I'd say it's probably for teens. I took a look and it's definitely not the Southern Reach trilogy.
I remember that you only really find out there is a hivemind towards the end of the first book.

[Kris]

We need to remove spoilers from the header/topic title and add a spoiler alert. (Spoilers are okay in the comments below.) How would you rephrase the header?

[Steph]

Kris wrote: "We need to remove spoilers from the header/topic title and add a spoiler alert. (Spoilers are okay in the comments below.) How would you rephrase the header?"

I attempted to edit it, but wasn't able to. Here's the changed title:

"YA Sci-Fi. A spaceship salvager finds girl in stasis within a tear of the fabric of space in a well-known half-destroyed ship that has been missing for decades and presumed lost. She later becomes part of team that uncovers deep Space Government secrets, and discovers an ancient enemy. Read around 2016-2019."

I also sat down and wrote as many plot points as I could remember. I'll make a new comment with that info, marking spoilers appropriately.

[Steph]

A single salvager is getting parts from a ship within a tear in space when he finds a life signal from one of the first ships to attempt sub-space (or whatever name they used for it). This ship had been missing for decades/centuries(?). He finds her in stasis and rescues her, barely making it out of the portal before it closes.

There are several “naturally stable portals” that exist near 12-13 different worlds. Some of the other portals have been put into quarantine due to safety concerns, and nobody is allowed near or in those systems. There is a group of Official Enforcers that are never seen without a mask/cloak.

Cut to a later scene that I remember. The salvager and the discovered girl now are a part of a group of four or five people. They are in employ of some official administration, iirc. I can’t remember if it was the actual government or a spy group, or just something else. They find out that they need to get an item that belongs to a wealthy collector of all things. This collector has a giant, territorial creature that is the very last of its kind. Eventually they have to go through the large enclosure without being eaten.

Looong spoiler ahead.
(view spoiler)[To do so, one of the members of the group records the creature’s call and plays it back as loud as possible on his datapad. He throws the datapad and one of the other members yells at him “What are you doing? Those datapads are more important than even our spaceship.” He replies, “If you were the last of your kind and you heard the call of another male, you would race after it.”

At some point they end up subduing a couple of the Enforces and remove their masks, to find their eyes were replaced with flowers.

Towards the end of the book, this group goes into one of the quarantine systems on a suspicion. They find that the system isn’t quarantined for the reason stated, but that it is a world used for recovering for an ancient plant-based hivemind that assimilates other organisms into itself. This hivemind once had a war with a powerful species that drove it nearly into extinction. These ancient, extinct beings used to have supreme control over the sub-space. These beings had transferred some of their vague powers to the discovered girl while she was trapped in the subspace.

It’s found out that the hivemind has control of the space government, and is almost ready to use ALL of the natural portals at once to infect all the worlds simultaneously.

They land on this planet, and fight their way through the plants, but unfortunately one of the girls gets infected and starts slowly getting assimilated into the hivemind. She looked into her infected friends eyes and saw that the pupils were already starting to take the shape of a flower. The discovered girl begins to discover her powers and attempts to strip and burn away the connections and hooks the hivemind had set within her friend, but the damage was too far, and destroying the hivemind’s influence would mean killing her friend.
The friend says it’s ok, and was a little afraid to say that looking into the hivemind, she’s a little afraid of the fact that she doesn’t want to leave it. The friend leaves and becomes one with the hivemind. (hide spoiler)]

That's all I remember at the moment. Somehow I remember this, but can't remember the book, author, character names, nothing.

[Steph]

EYYO reddit got it first! the book is Aurora Rising by Amie Kaufman!

[Bargle]

Link Aurora Rising by Amie Kaufman.