Gritty with plenty of twists to keep readers interested.
Books based on true events in history are a big hit with readers these days.

"When thrift-store aficionado Julie discovers a series of antique paintings with hidden glowing images that are only visible in the dark, she wants to learn more about the artist. In her search, she uncovers a century-old romance and the haunting true story of the Radium Girls, young women who used radioactive paint to make the world's first glow-in-the-dark products—and ultimately became radioactive themselves. As Julie’s obsession with the paintings mounts, truths about the Radium Girls—and her own complicated relationships—are revealed. But will she uncover the truth about the luminous paintings before putting herself and everyone she loves at risk?"

Come on, art history and adventure!?! Yes!

Books based on true stories are always a bit intense. When you're no longer creating every detail and the events or type of events that happen are based on real people then the suffering, pains and emotions felt by the characters in the story are more difficult to take.
I found Glow to be a very well written story about the 'Radium Girls', as they have been dubbed. These are girls that worked during WWII in a factory setting painting numbers onto watches with radium paint. They were encouraged to 'tip' their tiny brushes with their lips or teeth in order to waste as little paint as possible. This resulted in them being exposed to, and ingesting, high concentrations of radium. Radium is of course radioactive and deadly to humans.

The History
Even before reading the bibliography and historical notes provided by Megan E. Bryant at the end of the book, it was clear to me that a lot of research had been done into the events, details and lives of the Radium Girls. A quick perusal on Wikipedia will confirm many of the events that happen in Glow are based on true stories. While our characters are fictional and the exact progression of who and when certain key events happen; the actual events themselves (ie: teeth falling out, broken bones, doctors visits, protective equipment to workers in the factory except the women, etc.) our lead girls experience are all based on true fact.

Two Timelines
A common layout for historical books these days is to have two timelines. The one in which we experience the past (often in letters like used in Glow, or journal entries) and the 'current day' situation; in which we follow a character that is discovering the past for one reason or another. This format for storing telling works very well and Bryant uses it to her advantage to connect us, as the reader, to her current day character and subsequently back to our Radium Girls. While the focus is on the ultimate sacrifice and injustice done to the Radium Girls there is also a progression of discovering the truth, or allowing yourself to 'see' the truth in our current day story. The entire book as a whole is about ensuring you see the real truth and are not blinded by what you hope or wish to be reality. It's especially poignant to note that turning a blind eye to obvious truths, in the case of the Radium Girls, can kill you.

It's Not Pretty...
This is not a YA book to be handed to a young girl lightly. It is quite horrifying what these women were subject to. The way they were treated, dismissed and intentionally (by all accounts) poisoned. I would say if you wouldn't be comfortable giving a potential reader Night by Elie Wiesel, then I would also withhold Glow. While Night is far more horrific based how humans are treated (and certainly that there are so many humans affected), I could see Glow being just as upsetting to a young teen.
I think everything is different when you know it's based on true fact. There are descriptions of oozing, festering wounds, teeth and jaw lose or removal, and overall ailing sickness from radiation poisoning that could be disturbing to some. For me, even more horrifying than the illness, is that the men involved in the factory, the doctors that advise the women, and anyone 'in the know' (including the scientists that worked with the radium on the second level of the factory) all allowed these women to be subject to radium's radioactive properties knowing it would make them sick and eventually prematurely kill them. The management and scientists would wear protective gear, and when the women asked about it they were told it wasn't of concern for what they were doing. This revelation of the despicable actions of those involved in killing these women is easily the most disturbing part for me. At points I felt ill to my stomach thinking of these girls being subject to such toxic conditions; especially when they are berated for not 'tipping' their brushes which resulted in them ingesting the deadly paint.

This Book Deserves More Attention!
Given the historical story told here and it's eventual impact on today's labour laws, working condition requirements and perhaps even women's right or respect in the workplace; I am disappointed that Glow has such a small readership base to date.
I think everyone over 18 (at minimum) should read this book. It's a quick, concise read and is a good reminder that we need to continue to be vigilant with regulations, safety procedures and working condition restrictions every day. It's too easy to be told 'don't worry about it' or 'you'll be fine' or be shamed into silence. Glow is a sad but important reminder to us that, not that long ago in civilized society, people were willing to sacrifice others for the almighty dollar. War times or not there is never a good reason to put someone at risk in order to save a few dollars.

I encourage everyone to read Glow and reflect on the sacrifice the Radium Girls ultimately made in order for us to have a safer society today. There is much to be learned from the story of these girls. Certainly the most important is that we must always ensure we are looking out for ourselves when it comes to workplace conditions and safety. Your life or well being is not worth the money offered. The Radium Girls learned that much too late and it would be (and is) a tragedy for history to repeat itself anywhere in today's world in such a way as it did for these women. Let us advocate, learn and remain vigilant about safety as a way to commemorate and honour the Radium Girls for their sacrifice.
Your first step towards appreciating and honouring these women can be to read Bryant's Glow.

Please note: I received an eARC of this book from the publisher via NetGalley. This is an honest and unbiased review.

When I was offered this book for review I was very interested in the synopsis - the Radium Girls are not something I was overly familiar with but wanted to learn a bit more. This is a fictional story about a girl named Julie, that is going through some things in her life, she finds a painting and realizes that it glows in the dark. She makes it her summer mission to figure out how and why it does this.

The author uses Julie's story alternating with letters from a young girl in 1918 to portray both the present tale and the past in some detail. While Julie is uncovering the mystery of the paintings in her story, the reader is also learning about girls working in a Radium factory painting dials on watch faces for men at war.

I wasn't the biggest fan of Julie throughout the story - I was more interested with her leading me through the paintings and how she was finding them and trying to recreate them. I really loved reading the letters from Lydia in 1918 to her war hero Walter. They were interesting and it is where I learned about the Radium factory and what they did there. The author even has a note at the end of the book talking about the actual Radium Girls and how this story differs from the history but it was all very intriguing.

I really, really enjoyed this book for the brushes with history and I would recommend it to anyone looking for something like this. It was still fiction but very good. It is also a coming of age story and in Julie's tale there is a lot of life lessons that come out of her locating the paintings. It was a quick read because I was so enthralled with it all.

AW Teen and NetGalley provided me with an electronic copy of Glow. I was under no obligation to review this book and my opinion is freely given.

When Julie's dreams of pursuing her art at a top-notch university are crushed due to sudden financial obligations, her spirits are at their lowest point. A find in a thrift store of an old painting, however, gives the young woman a purpose. With only the initials of the artist to go by, will Julie ever be able to ask about the secret technique in the painting?

The story is written in two perspectives, in two distinct time periods. As Julie becomes more involved in discovering the identity of the artist and procuring more of the artist's works, the reader is looped into the past as it unfolded. Having read The Radium Girls by Kate Moore in the past few months, I recognized where author Megan E. Bryant was going with Glow. I thought it took her too long to get to the point, though, as the past unfolded with such a slow pace that readers unfamiliar with the subject matter may become lost. That being said, the author was successful in marrying two time periods together in a cohesive story. Both main characters were realistically drawn and their stories were both compelling. Readers who are fans of historical fiction will enjoy Glow and I definitely would recommend the book.

*I received this book for free from Publisher (via Netgalley) in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review. Read this review and more on my blog.The Book Return Blog
'There's a certain kind of light that I should have been afraid of all along.'


Radium was discovered by Marie Sklodowska-Curie and her husband Pierre Curie on December 21, 1898. When radium decays it causes luminescence. With America's entry into WWI came a need for self-luminous aircraft switches and instrument dials.
Marie and Pierre Curie by André Castaigne
Soldiers involved in trench warfare were especially in need of watches that could be seen in complete darkness. The harmful effects of radium were not yet known. Factories that produced the luminescent dials were set up Orange, New Jersey, Ottawa, Illinois, and Waterbury, Connecticut. These factories employed young girls and women to paint the numbers and hands with radium. Enter the radium girls.
Watch hands painted with radium
The painters were instructed to point their paintbrushes between their lips to create finer details on the numbers and hands of the watches. Not surprisingly, soon many of the workers began experiencing sores, anemia, and bone cancer. Radium is treated as calcium by the body and is deposited in the bones. The dial painting companies tried to cover up the adverse effects of radium and insisted that their workers were suffering syphilis (let that sink in for a minute). The tragedy of the radium girls, impart, lead to the forming of the Occupational Disease Labor Law.





'Glow' is told in alternating past and present points of view. Glow's past point of view tells the story of Lydia Grayson and her two sisters, Charlotte, and Liza. Liza works in the Orange, New Jersey dial painting factory. Liza gets Lydia a job there when one of the other girls becomes ill (a bit of foreshadowing here). This POV is told through letters Lydia writes to her beau, Walter, who is an American soldier fighting in Europe during WWI.
Glow's present POV is told from the first person perspective of Julie. Julie is a high school senior who is hoping to go to art school. Her future becomes marred due to family issues. Julie becomes fascinated with paintings she finds in a thrift store. She is then pulled into the search for the artist and the paintings past.


I love historical fiction but I have found that just plain historical fiction can be a bit dry. I really enjoy historical-fiction novels that switch between past and present points of view. When this done well, the past and present POV weave together two seemingly unrelated storylines that come together seamlessly.


YA historical fiction is not a genre that is as popular as it should be. Young Adult historical fiction is often pushed to the side by the flashier fantasy and feel-good contemporary novels. There are so many pieces of history that can tell an engaging story.
I loved so much about 'Glow'. I loved the characters of Liza and Lydia. Both their stories and personalities really brought life to the novel. Their younger sister Charlotte's passion to become one of the dial painters, like her sisters, really illustrated why women would want to work in the dial factories at this time. My one and only complaint with 'Glow' is that I would have liked to know more about Liza, Lydia, and Charlotte's mother. She was mentioned a few times but not really part of the story. I found my self-wondering how she was feeling about everything.



At first, I wasn't sure how I felt about Lydia's POV being told through her letters to her beau Walter. As I read, I realized these snippets of her life lead to the build-up of finding out what happened to her and her family. Their story was definitely a tear-jerker.

Julie's story was equally compelling. Her difficulties with her family and her friend, Lauren, really shows how she was struggling to deal with her own issues. Her love of art and science gave her an escape and gave an explanation why she was so fascinated by the paintings she discovered. Luke as a character was wonderful. Luke had his own issues so he was able to understand Julie's family problems. He was funny and kind and his added knowledge of chemistry added realism to Julie's story. I liked the relationship that he formed with Julie. Julie and Luke's relationship progressed slowly as this type of relationship usually does.

I found 'Glow' completely fascinating. I had never heard about the radium girls before. The radium girl's story is so enthralling and tragic. I can't believe their plight isn't more well known. This is such an important part of history. I have since found out that a non-fiction account of the radium girls story has been published and I am anxious to find out how it compares to 'Glow.' You can see it here.

I could have done without most of the modern story. What I found compelling was the watch factory, especially when I began to recognize what was going on. Its one of those cases where you know what's coming but you're still compelled to read. Because it's more than just the slow poison from radium. Its institutional deception and the rights of workers. Its love and dignity. And in that way it is tied to the modern story.

I have a love hate relationship with Glow, an upcoming young adult novel from Megan E. Bryant. Earlier this year, I read The Radium Girls by Kate Moore – an absolutely horrifying account of injustices committed against young women under the guise of patriotism. Before Moore, I cannot recall ever hearing about the dial painters. This book provides a fictional account based heavily on true stories about the girls that met their untimely demise.

The main character of Glow is a young woman of eighteen by the name of Jubilee – but don’t you dare call her that! She prefers Julie. After making the ultimate sacrifice for her mother, she spends the summer unraveling the mysteries behind paintings she finds at thrift stores while her best friend prepares for college.

Between each chapter, readers find an epistolary account from the mind of Lydia Grayson. Like her sisters, Lydia is one of the many girls that worked for the American Radium Company (I think I got that right). The Grayson sisters, for those that haven’t read The Radium Girls in order to make the comparison, appears to be based loosely on the Maggia sisters, while the company is, obviously, a fictionalized version of the United States Radium Corporation. (Amelia “Mollie” Maggia was the first of the Radium Girls to die.)

Unlike most books that attempt this method, I do not find the switch between perspectives and styles to be detrimental or clunky – if anything, it is inconvenient. Rather than wrap up preceding chapters, Bryant uses these switches to leave Julie’s story on a cliffhanger more than once throughout the book. This style can easily be avoided, considering the letters written from Lydia to her boyfriend are interesting enough on their own to propel the reader forward.

While Julie’s story offers an plot that appeals to younger readers, I feel Glow would have worked just fine without it. For that purpose, I’m caught between a three and a four on this book. Ultimately, I lean toward the latter and must applaud Bryant on the amount of research she obviously put into writing this book. Julie’s story is unbelievable and full of things that I simply have no interest in, but the haunting tale that the Grayson sisters weave is horrifying.

Originally posted on Forever Young Adult on 2017 September 05.

BOOK REPORT for Glow by Megan E. Bryant

Cover Story: Big (Watch) Face
BFF Charm: Meh and Yay
Swoonworthy Scale: 1
Talky Talk: First Person/Epistolary Face-Off
Bonus Factor: Radium Girls
Relationship Status: Didn’t Quite Light My Fire Dial

Cover Story: Big (Watch) Face

This cover has not one, not two, but three big faces—if you count the watch face with the glowing dial, of course. I like the concept, but not the execution. Something feels a little off-balance. On the other hand, I have to give it props for effectively conveying what the book is about, even if you’ve never heard of the Radium Girls before.

The Deal:

Julie was supposed to be at college right now—but she gave her mother her entire college savings account to save their house from foreclosure. While everyone is getting ready to decorate their dorms, she’s working two jobs to help her mom scrape by. At least there’s thrifting, which at least presents the possibility of being able to afford to shop.

One day, she finds a pretty painting that her gut tells her she must have. When she gets home and shuts off the lights, an eerie glow finds its way through the oils and reveals a completely different painting underneath. Julie’s instantly obsessed: how did the artist accomplish this? Are there more paintings? She’s got to figure out how it was done. But when the next painting reveals a far creepier glowing message, she finds herself wondering what story the artist is trying to tell…

BFF Charm: Meh and Yay

BFF meh 9-5

I could have done without Julie’s entire story, to be honest. She’s akin to the Friday Night Lights character of the same name: a deeply annoying teenager with occasional glimpses of humanity. Her mother sucks, her bestie sucks, her life situation sucks (to which I am sympathetic), and she seems to lack the basic ability to Google. Although she’s the narrator, her story is the least interesting part of the book, and the plot holes didn’t help endear me to her. Sorry girl, you’re not getting my BFF charm anytime soon.

BFF yay 9-5

Lydia, on the other hand, is a similarly-aged girl living in 1917 New Jersey. She works at the American Radium Corporation, painting watch dials with this new “miracle” element, and writes letters to her WWI sweetheart. Lydia definitely gets my charm: she’s compassionate to the mysteriously sick, stubbornly pursues justice on her sisters’ behalf, and isn’t afraid to take measures to protect her loved ones.

Swoonworthy Scale: 1

There’s an incredibly convenient romance for Julie, but like all things regarding her story, it didn’t do anything for me.

Talky Talk: First Person/Epistolary Face-Off

While Julie is the present-day narrator, the story switches between her perspective, and Lydia’s letters to her sweetheart Walter. Lydia’s letters are the best part of the book; she and her sisters are based closely on the stories of real-life Radium Girls. Sometimes a switch between voices, time periods, and narrative style works. In this case, Glow would have been better off focusing on Lydia. Julie’s story only serves to fill in the gaps where Lydia’s letters fail the reader.

Bryant’s writing makes the story fly past in record time. Her love and care detailing the plight of the Radium Girls comes through loud and clear, well before the author’s note (which is worth reading). It’s the sort of book designed to spark a love of history, and I think if I were a teen who’d never heard of the Radium Girls before, it would have done its job nicely.

Bonus Factor: Radium Girls

Radium Girls

The Radium Girls, for anyone who didn’t know, were girls in WWI-era North America who painted glowing watch dials. Radium was a newly-discovered radioactive element—but the companies at the time encouraged girls to stick their brushes in their mouths to get a finer tip.

When the girls got sick, it was gruesome. It ate away at their jaws, loosened their teeth, and made them so fragile that dancing could cause their bones to snap. When the companies were confronted with the sick girls, they took the deplorable tack of blaming the ailments on syphilis. For an excellent introduction, this Jezebel article with a non-fiction Radium Girls author will give you an overview of just how horrible this situation was.

Casting Call:

Aimee Teegarden 9-5

FNL-era Aimee Teegarden as Julie

Relationship Status: Didn’t Quite Light My Fire Dial

Book, I had such high hopes for our date, but in the end, I liked only one of your split personalities. Your glowing paintings and look into the past were eerie, horrific, and tragic—but you inspired me to look elsewhere to get my history nerd needs met.

Glow is available now.

Bryant, Megan E. Glow, 272 pages. Albert Whitman, 2017. $17. Language: PG-13 (32 swears, 0 ‘f’); Mature Content: G (inferences only); Violence: PG-13 (gruesome disfigurements).

In the present day - Julie’s dreams were shattered when her father left them and she had to give her college savings to her mother to keep their heads afloat. While her best friend is shopping and packing her bags for her college years, Julie finds a strange painting, made even stranger when she realizes it glows in the dark, revealing unsettling, actually quite disturbing new scapes. In 1917 - Lydia is so excited when her older sister gets her a well-paying job at the watch factory. The girls are painting tiny numbers on the dial in a new paint that allows them to be read in the dark. In order to make such tiny numbers, the girls lick the brushes to point the tips. The girls’ stories intersect through a diary and the paintings, which reveal a grim, little known scene out of American history.

Bryant does a skillful job of interweaving the modern and the historic, helping readers connect with a topic they might not otherwise bother with. If you haven’t heard of the Radium Girls, give them quick look. Bryant brings both stories back around together in a satisfying, if tragic way.

MS, HS - ADVISABLE. Cindy, Library teacher

Glow is one-half contemporary young adult novel and one-half historical, epistolary, young adult novel. It is eye-opening to see the lifestyles of two women of the same age, but different times, juxtaposed. In one instance, you have a young woman, Lydia, whose love is fighting in the trenches in World War I, working at a factory for a decent wage to help support her family, slowly coming to terms that the fascinating paint she uses could be deadly while another, Julie, works to save for college at McDonald’s where the danger is smelling like grease after work.

Lydia’s story is engrossing (it must be; I started Glow around 9 pm and finished at am, unwilling to set the book aside). She is a decent young woman whose boyfriend has just left for the war and she’s despondent until her older sister, Liza, drags her, pretty much literally, to the factory where she works when there is an opening, after a young woman gets sick. Because the pay is so good, Lydia is happy to work there. She also is intrigued by the glowing paint because it seems to beautiful.

However, as time passes and the young woman who was sick, dies, and Liza becomes ill, Lydia begins to suspect things may not be all that they seem.

Julie’s story is not quite as fascinating, but only because it feels like most contemporary young adult novels, except that Bryant has not glossed over Julie’s interactions or those around her. Julie and her friend, Lauren, act like modern teenagers with pettiness sometimes rearing its head, blended with jealousy and impatience.

Glow delves into how people communicate and how they sometimes don’t. Lydia and her sisters often miscommunicate and have hurt feelings as a result. Likewise, Julie and Lauren and Julie’s mom miscommunicate with the same result. Maybe times haven’t changed too extensively.

Bryant doesn’t shy away from discussing science in Glow. For me, a caped, crusading tech writer/editor during the day, this was not an issue; it felt like science-light to me. Some who dislike science might find it grueling while I was intrigued. Also, Bryant doesn’t shy away from discussing the sometimes gruesome details of radiation poisoning, which made the story of the girls working in the factory so very sad, especially when some men were more concerned with covering up the possibility of sickness rather than helping.

Lastly, there is some beautiful writing in Glow, especially passages near the end where Julie contemplates her future, having been enlightened by all of the events she experienced.

I highly recommend Glow, especially for those of you who are intrigued by science and this dark passage in the aftermath of the discovery of radium when it was thought it would be the cure to cancer and other health problems. Even as I write these last words, I think of more I’d like to share with you, but then I could be discussing Glow all day and you’d never have a chance to read it.

I'm too old to be reading YA fiction and this proves it. I rolled my eyes numerous times while reading.

That being said, it did lead me to do more research on the radium painters.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the opportunity to read and review this book.

When I requested this book, it was in conjunction with the book The Radium Girls that I had also requested. I was very interested to see how they addressed the issue when dealing with young adults. The other book was not for the faint of heart in some spots. While the cover of the book looked slightly childish I try to not “judge a book by its cover”.

The story revolves around Julie. She is a budding art student who gives her mother her $200,000 school savings to save her from crushing debt and foreclosure on the house. Now in order to make ends meet she works two jobs. One at Bed, Bath and Beyond and the other at McDonald’s. She is scrimping and saving to pay her way through the art college of her dreams. So when she is thrift shopping with her best friend Lauren and comes across a painting she knows she has to have it. There is another painting and the owner offers to sell it as well for a discount but she doesn’t really think she needs it. That is until she goes home and views the painting in the dark of her room. Suddenly, the painting is awash with a glow. To her surprise and delight, there is a gruesome glowing painting underneath that shines through with an unearthly light. That night she decides that she HAS to go back for the other painting to see if that one glows as well. When she goes back, however, the owner has raised the price. When Julie does decide to buy it, she learns that there were multiple paintings but the shop owner only wanted the two she had in the store. Julie manages to find all the paintings. Julie then embarks on a mission to find out what is making them glow. She experiments with various paints and nothing seems to be the answer. Will Julie discover what is making the unearthly glow before it is too late?

While this book was a good quick read, it seemed at times way to YA and at other times (the almost sex scene in the rain) much older than what I think of as young adult. My other issue was that the after an entire book of build up the answers were all in the last chapter and a half. The conclusion seemed rushed. If we had slowed down the book would have come to a nice end and I wouldn’t be left wondering what Julie decides to do. I do think choosing a storyline that revolves around Radium is an interesting choice for a YA book. It will make them curious to learn more about this substance and hopefully, open new opportunities for them to learn.

The books I like best set a really good story, or maybe two, in an authentic time in history. Glow by Megan E. Bryant, with its book birthday today on September 1, is just such a book. Chapters rotate between two teenaged girls. Julie’s story is told in narrative in the present day while Lydia’s tale is in letters to her soldier. Not only does Megan shift between the two girls with different styles of story, their distinctive voices in the telling reflect the period in which they live.

Present day Julie has relationship issues with a father who has abandoned the family, a mother who needs her college money for debt rescue, a friend whose continuing plans for college inspire envy, and maybe a boyfriend. These become peripheral when Julie finds some mysterious art in a secondhand store which glows in the dark revealing an entirely different painting. She begins a trek to find out where and how it was produced and who the “LG” might be who signed these and other paintings she locates in her search. It is almost too late before she realizes the paintings themselves are placing her in great danger.

Lydia, in the alternating chapters, tells her story in the letters she writes to Walter beginning on September 5, 1917. She and her two sisters become caught up in the excitement of making glow-in-the-dark watches. The reader will see where this is going long before Lydia does and will want to yell out words of caution.

Like many books listed for young adults, this one captures the attention of an adult reader as well. The Author’s Note at the end gives a good capsule of the history behind the novel. For a more detailed historical account, I recommend a paired reading with The Radium Girls: The Dark Story of America’s Shining Women by Kate Moore, which I reviewed on this blog on May 12, 2017.

Glow is a young adult novel by Megan E. Bryant that sheds light on a dark time in American history. Julie (Jubilee) Chase, a high school graduate who was looking forward to attending College only to have it postponed due to her mother's debt issues. When the bank was about to foreclose on their mortgage, Julie cashed out her college fund to buy the house. She harbors resentment towards her mother for having to lose her college fund, putting her dreams on hold, while her mom seems to not be bothering to find a job. Julie's friend Lauren is from a well-to-do family and is off to college leaving Julie behind. This creates a rift between the two, bringing the worst out of the both of them. Attempting to salvage their friendship they head off for a fun day of shopping (Lauren's idea), and Julie buys a painting at Lost and Found consignment store. When darkness blankets Julie's room the painting reveals a glowing secret artwork that ignites her curiosity. She becomes obsessed with finding more paintings by the same artist, and attempts to re-create the technique. Julie has no idea that the technique involves the "radium girls" who unknowingly poisoned themselves while painting numbers on watch dials used to help soldiers see the time more accurately during WWI.

Bryant uses fictional characters inspired by real history to tell the story of the "radium girls." The perspective shifts back and forth from Lydia in 1917-1918 to Julie in modern time. We hear Lydia's story from letters she writes to her beloved Walter who has gone off to war. Lydia has an incredible weight upon her shoulders at 16 years old. Her older sister Liza helps Lydia get a job at ARC painting watch dials with a magical glowing substance. The same magical powder used to make the paint is also sold as a cure for practically all ailments.

While running an errand at the local college Julie meets Luke (Lucien), a chemistry student working at the college over the summer. Their friendship evolves as he helps her figure out how to create the glow-in-the-dark paint.

Through Julie's research and Lydia's letters we learn the heart-wrenching story of the Grayson sisters. There are parts of the story which are descriptive and vivid. I will admit that I cried twice while reading this page-turner.

I do have a couple of complaints. For one, why is Julie friends with Lauren? Lauren is selfish, stubborn, and rude. I feel like the tension between Lauren and Julie was unnecessary to the plot.

I also find it strange that Julie didn't suspect the glow-in-the-dark paint used on the vintage artwork. She researched how to create the paint, yet somehow didn't stumble across the possibility of radioactive ingredients.

There were a couple of times where the dialogue felt a bit clunky, and I also think Lydia's letters are a little unbelievable. I don't know anyone who writes complete back-and-forth dialogue while recounting an event in a letter.

Even though a couple small areas were bothersome, this is an extremely important story to write, to read, and to share. Glow is an incredible story that sheds light on the hideous greed of some companies who put profit above health, giving opportunity for brave people to sacrifice, and fight for what's right.

I received an advanced copy in exchange for my honest, unbiased opinion. Thank you Brandi from Flutter Communications, the publisher, the author, and NetGalley, for allowing me to review.

This YA novel follows recent high school graduate Julie, who finds her college plans suddenly derailed. As she works two minimum wage jobs, she encounters a series of thrift store paintings. Each seemingly innocent painting hides a secret macabre scene, which only glows in the dark. She begins a quest to figure out how the artist made the secret scenes glow. Interspersed with the novel are letters written by Lydia Grayson, a young woman who worked in a radium dial painting plant during World War I.

I really liked that this novel introduces YA readers to the basics of what happened to the Radium Girls and a little bit about the effects of radiation. I think it is an excellent fictionalized account of an incident from our nuclear past. It is important to know that business is not always on the side of the employees, and ionizing radiation is nothing to scoff at.

As an adult reader, I did have to suspend my disbelief to fully enjoy this novel. I found it hard to believe that someone who knows what strontium and europium are would not have immediately guessed that glowing paintings from this era contained radium. Even if she didn't her Luke the chemist should have known right away. Also, the handling of contaminated materials was inconsistent throughout the novel. I also do not believe that people put full dialog of their conversations in their letters. A lot of historical novels written in epistolary form fall into this hole. Would you write a letter like that, or would you paraphrase?

Thank you to NetGalley and Albert Whitman & Company for an e-arc in exchange for my honest review.
Review will be posted on readingwithwrin.blogspot.com on Aug 4th, 2017

Earlier this year I read Radium Girls by Kate Moore which is a non-fiction book about the woman who painted pocket watches with radium during WWI. So when I saw this YA book also dealt with a radioactive plant, I knew I had to read it.

In Glow, we switch back and forth between Julie and Lydia. Julie is a modern day young women who gave up her college dream in order to help her mother pay off debt, so they don't lose everything. Because of this Julie is sad, and her best friend Lauren who is still going away to college decides that she needs to go on a shopping trip to help lift her spirits. While thrifting Julie finds some paintings that she decides to get. She has no idea what they hold though and once she gets them home she realizes they have a mysterious glow.
Which is when we finally get to meet Lydia a 16-year-old in 1917 who is working at the Radium Dial plant painting watch faces for soldiers. Her big sister also works with her and got her the job in the first place. But when the ladies start getting sick, and her sister is one of them. Lydia does everything in her power to help her get better. All while slowly making things worse because of the lies being told to her. Once she realizes whats really going on, she stops at nothing to save her little sister Charlotte and to make the company pay for what they have done.

Personally, I would have liked more of Lydia's story, or maybe Julie actually working on her own to figure out what happened etc, instead of just trying to recreate the glow herself. Having said that though I did enjoy this book.
Julie's story is one that while realistic, also got rather annoying at times with how she placed the blame for her choices on others instead of choosing to go to a different school while she saved to go to her dream one. I also really disliked how she treated Lauren, I get it you don't have money anymore, but instead of just pouting all the time, find cheap things to do etc., don't just shut your best friend out and then wonder why they don't come around. As you can probably tell I got pretty frustrated with Julie for most of the book. The ending did redeem her a little bit.

Lydia's story is heartbreaking and one that needs to be told and while this novel only touches the surface of the horrors the radium dial painters went through, it's still nice to see it being the focus of a YA novel. The Young women at these plants changed things for everyone in the work force with work safety and compensations if you get hurt on the job, and while most of them never saw anything. They will never be forgotten.

Megan Bryant seems to be something of a polymath in the novel world, not stuck-in-a-rut with any one audience or genre, but covering a variety of topics and age ranges, so I could identify with her somewhat on that score! I haven't read anything of hers before, but this young adult outing interested me, and I thank the publisher for a chance to read an advance review copy.

Glow is about this college student named - embarrassingly, she thinks - Jubilee, but who goes by Julie. Julie is a wannabe student, but she was forced to forgo her planned freshman year because her mother ran into some serious debts and Julie's college fund was sucked dry when she paid them off. On a scavenger shopping trip with her well-off friend, who seems to have more money than sense, Julie accidentally happens upon this cheap, but original painting at a second-hand store. The art speaks to her and it's cheap(!), so she buys it at the knock-down price.

At home that night, the painting almost knocks her down when she discovers that there's a second painting hidden beneath the first, and it's one which can only be seen when the lights are off, because it glows in the dark. She finds a second painting by the same artist, and that too, has the same feature. The image it shows though, is grotesque and disturbing, so she becomes obsessed with finding out who the artist is and what the hidden pictures mean.

Just as there are two paintings incorporated in each canvas, there are two stories in this novel. I liked the symmetry of that. The second story alternates with the first, and provides answers to questions asked in it. It takes place via letters written by a young woman in 1917 to her boyfriend who was in Europe fighting World War One.

It becomes obvious to the reader long before it does to Julie, just what has happened here, since it's pretty clear from these letters. The girl who painted the pictures was showing the world what the painting watch faces using radioactive materials would do to people. I actually figure out exactly who it was too, something I'm not normally able to do!

The people depicted in the paintings were those who became known as the 'radium girls' - people who became sick from exposure to radioactive materials long before anyone really knew, or cared, how dangerous these horrors we have exposed in our world truly are. Wikipedia contains the very photograph of the factory which gets a visit in the novel (a visit which technically could not have occurred, but I let that slide, too!).

The fact is that no story is perfect (not even mine, LOL!), and while this one had one or two issues, none of them was sufficient to make me dislike the story which I consider to be important. The first problem or me in a novel like this is first person voice. I have no idea why so many authors, particularly in the young-adult world, are so addicted to it, but it is a weak and problematic voice and in my opinion should be used only in extremis! Some authors can carry it though, and this author is evidently one of them, I'm happy to report, because it wasn't at all obnoxious, so that objection was assuaged here.

Another format I'm not enamored of is the epistolary one, and that's also employed here, but again this author brought it in as a way to introduce a second first person voice. While for me, two first person voices are usually two too many, I did appreciate the way she snuck this in under the radar (under most people's radars!) by having the letters be the medium by which the second voice was delivered. Superficially it worked, and again it was not nauseating for me to read. I was also glad it wasn't done with flashbacks which I also detest, but to me all of these methods are potential liabilities for a writer because they do serious harm to the realism and credibility of the story.

No one who is telling you a story of their personal adventure can recall every detail and relate it, including verbatim conversations, and this is one reason I dislike this particular voice so much: it's far too inauthentic for my taste. This was a problem in the epistolary portions because the writer didn't sound at all like someone who was writing in 1917! The language and tone were all wrong and the detailed conversations were too much, but as I said, it wasn't obnoxious, and fortunately, I enjoyed the story enough that I was willing to let this slide. You see? I told you you can get away with a lot of sins in a novel if you tell me a good story, and this author did.

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There was romance, but again this author managed it well, and so she did not piss me off there, either! It's like she knew just how far to push things with me without tripping any triggers! I was tempted to think she reads my blog, but that's really too much of a stretch!

I have to say that the texting didn't work though. To be honest, I think this was more a result of Amazon's truly crappy Kindle app failing to reproduce the author's original layout, that ever it was the author's fault. We should, as a writing and publishing community, flatly refuse to publish any books in Kindle format until Amazon makes it as good as the Nook or PDF format, but that's just me.

The problem with the crappy Kindle migration is that the texts were not spaced properly, and so it was hard to tell who was saying what! I am, probably needless to say, not a fan of writers reproducing phone texts in novels. It inevitably sounds fake.

I think that too many writers think it's 'edgy' or 'now' or something, to reproduce texts, but I'd much rather they simply delivered the gist of the conversation than tried to recreate an actual detailed text exchange, because it rarely works. I can see where there might be reasons for doing that, but as a general rule, reading other people's texts, even fictional ones, is seriously boring and I think it's lazy on the part of a writer to write like that.

Rather than read:

You up for breakfast?
:)
where shall we meet?
Breakfast Nook?
Sounds good 2 me
Time?
8?
K
K

or something like that, I'd much rather read, "He texted me about breakfast and we arranged to meet at the Breakfast nook at eight." I don't need to read the verbatim text, and I sure don't need to read one larded with symbols and abbreviations! Not that this was the case here, thankfully, because this author has caught up with the fact that modern phones fill in text for you, so you don't need to employ "abrvs"!

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I have to say that Julie came across as a bit slow in solving this problem given her academic background (as indeed was her friend Lauren), but sometimes people are simply slow, and they don't always arrive as quickly at what might seem to others to be an obvious conclusion as we might think they ought. Julie isn't a science whizz after all, otherwise she would never have said, "I know time didn’t stop - I know that’s not possible; the laws of physics forbid it." Actually it is possible: that's exactly what an event horizon is, around a black hole! But yeah, ok, for most ordinary purposes, it's true that time doesn't stop.

Julie's quite literal, and highly ill-advised toxic encounter with Luke, given what she'd just learned, was a bit odd to me, too. I expected better of her than that, and she seemed to be thinking only of herself, but I forgave that as a moment of madness, given the shock she'd just had. Even though the ending of the story seemed to leave some of the friction between Julie and her mom unresolved - or at least un-discussed (erm, kitchen appliances, anyone?), overall I liked the way the book ended, too. It was nicely wrapped up, overall.

The story of the radium girls has been told before in different ways, and more than once. In one instance it was told as an animated short released in 2007 by Jo Lawrence, and also titled Glow, but that one has no relation to this story as far as I know.

The thing is though, that I don't think you can over-tell a story like this because it's one more example of appalling corporate greed overriding the safety and welfare of employees, and this kind of crap is still going on today - although hopefully not with radioactive materials! it sure as hell is going on with noxious chemicals in China, particularly with people who are building the very electronic devices we in the west worship so devotedly and demand so cheaply.

Until we as a society learn and thoroughly internalize the tragic historical lessons of capitalistic avarice and callousness, we thoroughly deserve to keep being hit hard over the head for our stupidity and ignorance, and this book does that well. That and the fact that this a pretty decent story is why I consider it a worthy read and recommend it.

This story was so good! Even though Julie and Lauren are young adults, this story will appeal to all. While shopping, Julie and Lauren discover some paintings at a thrift store. To their amazement, these paintings glow in the dark. Julie becomes obsessed with finding out why these paintings glow and starts searching for more of them at other thrift stores. She soon learns about the Radium Girls and how these paintings are connected to them. I recently read The Radium Girls by Kate Morton, and this is historical fiction based on these courageous young women. I highly recommend this book! It is very well written and is will make the reader want to learn more about The Radium Girls!

The story moved back and forth between Julie, from the present, who finds a painting that looks different when the lights are turned off. As an artist, she becomes obsessed with finding out how this was done. The past consists of letters from a young woman, one of the people who painted the numbers on watches using dangerous paints, to her boyfriend who is in the military. The letters become more upsetting as the book goes on, and we are given a glimpse of what life was like for the radium girls.

The author did a good job of showing how the characters felt through their actions and words. She also set each scene with the little details that bring a book to life. As with any good book, there are a few characters that are a bit difficult to like, and some that feel superfluous, however, they do bring out different elements of the characters personality and I felt they were an interesting addition: One of these is Luke, a young college student Julie meets who really gives her much to think about as he has taken a different approach than she in terms of a college education. There is also Julie’s mother, who was saved from losing her house by her daughter’s giving up her college fund, and she doesn’t seem to want to work. These people let you see other sides of the main character.


The book does make me curious about what happened in the past with the radium girls, and I plan to read the non fiction book on this subject. Overall, I thought the book was an interesting one on a topic I knew nothing about.