This book was a slow burn for quite a while and I wasn't certain if I liked it. Once the action ramped up I was hooked! I enjoyed the intricate and highly detailed world created by the author and I loved the friendship between the three main characters! I look forward to reading the next books in this series!

Title : Glow
Series :
Author:
Sci Fi
Rating: 2
The Maasai Mara Sleeping Syndrome has returned after a six-month hiatus. This time, it’s popped up in New York, and it’s wiped out an entire homeless shelter.

The same night of the outbreak—thousands of miles away—Harper, a seventeen-year-old girl, finds herself face-to-face with a glowing figure in the desert outskirts of her neighborhood. As her suburb goes on lockdown, Harper is kidnapped and taken to the Base of Ki, a massive dome with a sheening white city and fantastic technology. There, she must form new alliances to save her friends, family, and species before they lose all chance of returning to Earth.

My thoughts
Would I recommend it? No
Will I be going on with the series ?No
Will I read anything else by this author?No
While I enjoy science fiction and some time get lost in the story unfortunately it just didn't do anything for me, I thought the plot was ok but it didn't flow like the author wanted it to, and the characters seemed flat, there was nothing about them or the story that kept me interest in what was going on.To tell you the truth the only thing it had going for itself is the cover which is beautiful.With that said I want to thank NetGalley for letting me read and review it even though I won't be going on with the series.

4 out of 5 stars.

What first drew me to this book, what really caught my interest, was the original concept of a story, and the fact it is/was a YA dystopian style book without the usual saccharine, teen angst romance you seem to find in a lot of YA books lately. Kudos to the author on this interesting and different slant on the aftermath of "what if the Earth...". Without giving away too much, I will say it was a delight to have a female main character who wasn't all wishy-washy however still wasn't grown up enough to know all the answers. She is living in Reno, NV when the event happens, and it's not long before things change, and quick. She soon discovers many things about herself and her family, which turns her completely on her head. Everything she thought she knew is gone. The author does a wonderful job on creating and describing this "alternate world", and it is quite believable.

For those who enjoy the YA dystopian genre that has little-to-no romance, with a character-driven plot, then you might enjoy this!

In closing, I would like to thank the author, publisher and NetGalley for allowing me the opportunity to read this delightfully creative book in exchange for an honest review.

This book had some really good potential. A strange virus going around and a seventeen-year-old girl at the middle of it all? This could have been a great story, if it had stayed at that. But it felt more like the plots of several books shoved into one.

It started to get boring when Harper, the seventeen-year-old girl, was sort of abducted by aliens. But somehow we don’t get to see much about how this alien world works. We get told in dialogue how everything is supposed to work, and what everything is called. But we are never showed. So we get pages over pages of information. And somewhere between the pages the plot got slightly lost.
And Harper herself felt a bit flat. She had no personality really and accepted her fate fairly quickly. Her “fight” to save humanity had so much potential but fell flat due to her personality.

I've had a hard time with this review because I both enjoyed this and didn't. It started out good with the mysterious illness spreading and causing Harper's suburb to be on lockdown. Harper tries to make a run for it and is picked up by aliens.

There's so much information in this story and it's all told rather than shown. It got so slow that I was having a hard time staying focused. It's so long, which can be ok if it's well written and exciting but the sheer amount of info dumping was exhausting. I liked a lot of the world building. There's details about how things work, what things do, what it's all named, her schedule. There was just too much information we didn't need and it made the story drag.

Harper is the typical character who doesn’t know she’s special but finds out she is, which isn't my favourite but I've accepted that sterotype in my YA. I lost interest in Harper and didn't find her particularly likable.

It was interesting to read about human behavoiurs and how the Ancients saw them. What they saw humans doing to each other saddens me as it's a part of our world (racism, labour camps, slaves, etc).. I always appreciate when a story is wiling to go there.

Overall, this isn't what I was hoping for. It's too slow, too long, and I didn't like the main character. I do think there will be plenty of people who will enjoy the story telling and world building.

You can find this review and all of my others over at www.readbookrepeat.wordpress.com

Actual rating of 2.5

Harper is seventeen years old, all she wants to do is play soccer with her friends and have a life, but her extremely strict mother won't hear of it. When the Maasai Mara Sleeping Syndrome hits a homeless shelter in New York, Harper's mother goes even more bananas with her strict rules. It isn't until Harper comes across a strange being in the desert that she starts to think maybe she should be listening to said mother, except she doesn't, and ends up being separated from her family when the CDC locks down her small neighbourhood in Reno. She is separated from her family and friends, and people are dying all around her, she knows there's something wrong, but can't figure it out. She's still terrified of the thing she saw in the desert, and is worrying about her sister, Olivia, and her friends who are trapped in the quarantine zone. What happens next turns Harper's life upside down, everything she thought she knew was wrong, and this is just the beginning...

Rating this book was really hard. I REALLY enjoyed the first part of the book where the Sleeping Syndrome was making a comeback and people were getting worried, I absolutely loved the story in the beginning. It was so riveting and I was glued to the page, I struggled putting the book down in order to get some sleep. So I was pretty disappointed when the story lost it's fast moving pace when Harper ends up in an Alien base. This is where things should have gotten even more interesting, but they really didn't. The story sort of took a slow backwards decent after the initial build up.

The story had incredibly interesting ideas, but I just felt that they weren't executed very well. Once Harper gets to the base of Ki, things really slowed down, and it was quite a hard slog to get through the story. It begins cataloguing absolutely everything that Harper and the other characters that we meet, go through. I felt that this wasn't really necessary in order to world build, as I felt that we were more told about the world, than shown it from Harper's perspective. Obviously we were shown some of it from Harper, but something just didn't feel right in the world building aspect for me, and I'm having trouble putting my finger on it. As I said, the story had super interesting ideas, but they were kinda lost in the droning of the unnecessary rundown of Harper's days.

Harper seemed like a gutsy character at the start, but she became so accepting when on the base of Ki, I'm wondering whether it was because of the memory erasing, or the fact that the people she meets in Ki acted like more of a caring family to her. It was so easy to dismiss her family on Earth, and besides Olivia, I can understand why that was. So it's not totally unbelievable that she had no faith in them, because she didn't in the beginning anyway. She did seem to settle into and accept the whole human/ancient hybrid theory, but I guess it's hard to ignore when your entire appearance changes. She feels that it would be so much easier to just accept her life on the base than try to attempt getting back to Earth, I feel like there should have been a bit more warring within herself at this point, but that's just my opinion.

I had this underlying feeling, mainly through reading experience, that everything was not as it first appeared on the Base of Ki, but this wasn't exactly illustrated throughout the story, just the couple of characters who weren't happy with their lives there. I feel like more emphasis needed to be put on the whole "something's not right with this picture" feeling that the story TRIES to give you, but ends up failing. If it were not for my prior experience with the whole "obviously there has to be something wrong here" thing, I may not have continued as I wouldn't have felt like there was something to be resolved. The story devolved from a fast paced page turner into a slow jaunt through a sunny meadow. The sense of urgency in the story just wasn't there, or if it was, it really did not come through at all. We're thrown into this absolutely amazing story, to then end up basically back in the crib learning how to roll over again. It was a little bit frustrating, and I was really hoping that it would turn back into a fast paced page turner, because I absolutely adored the beginning of the book.

The characters were okay, but I found Harper to be a bit thick at times. Gasping over Jacqueline doing certain things, when of course, due to their situation, she wouldn't be doing these things at all, but just pretending. She seemed so gullible, which sort of contradicted this character that I met at the beginning of the book. Jacqueline was an okay character, as was...Adam? I've suddenly had a mental blank and can't remember his name. The most interesting character was Rubaveer, I thought she was great, and Arl and Vulgun (I think that's his name?) the two scientist Ancients were great too. But to be honest, none of the characters are really sticking into my head, there could have been an interesting connection between Harper and Daryl Pope, but it was sort of hinted at then left to fizzle out and die. So I'm not sure why the interaction between them was even there.

I feel like this book needed another couple of rounds of heavy editing, in order to fix the pacing of the story and to keep it linear. I don't feel that this book needed to be 699 pages long, a lot of things could have been condensed, written in order to BE condensed, or cut out completely. I know that having that much information included did give us a better understanding of the hierarchy of the Ancients and the hybrids, but I still felt like it was totally unnecessary. We didn't need to have every single step of the story laid out before us like it was - a lot could have been cut down.

All in all, I AM interested in seeing what happens in the follow up book to this (of which I'm assuming there will be at least one) but I'm just hoping that the editing does it's job and that the pacing is a lot better.

Thank you to the author Aubrey Hadley, the publisher Ruby and Topaz and NetGalley for providing an ARC in exchange for my candid review.

I love the concept of this book. It is a YA post-dystopian book with a new an novel concept. It is about an alien species that is killing off humans on earth with a strange disease, while sparing the lives of hybrids which were created by people called Sentinels. However, the book is really in need of a great editor. I found the storyline to be interesting, but the writing style was annoying. At times, the author greatly over-explained details that were completely unnecessary, while skipping major explanations elsewhere. Any time I am conscious of the writing and not fully absorbed in the story means that the writing is really not good.

The storyline could have been much tighter and more succinct while fleshing out other areas.

I really hate to discourage a writer---I think that there is a good story in here.....it just needs to have a better focus.

I could never really get into the book. I might try it again later but for right now other books capture my attention

Thank you Ruby and Topaz Publishing and Netgalley for an ARC of this book.

This is a genre I don’t usually read so I decided to try something different. The book was enjoyable enough to read but didn’t sway me one way or another in relation to future books within this genre.

Harper is a seventeen-year-old girl living in Reno, Nevada. She is homeschooled and feels that her mother is overly strict, so they frequently butt heads when she sneaks out to play soccer with friends. She doesn't pay much attention to news about the Maasai Mara Sleeping Sickness, an illness that induces euphoria and then lethargy before killing its victims. At least, not until it comes to her neighborhood.

While the official summary sets up the mystery of the sleeping sickness and introduces Harper as the main character, that takes up the first third of the book. We see a lot about Harper and her family, and it's very much a slice of life and a realistic look into a teenager's life. However, once the sickness reaches Reno, the weirdness takes over and there is a distinct shift away from the everyday life and closer to the sci-fi. This probably isn't a huge spoiler, but Harper is actually an alien hybrid, and there is a significant element of body horror when her human skin is taken from her and her appearance changed without her consent. The Leveling process of introducing hybrids to others after they are in isolation for a period of time smacks of gaslighting and torture, which is off-putting for me.

Once Harper and the other hybrids are allowed into the city proper, there is definitely more suspense as she and her new friends bond and try to figure out the purpose to the secrecy and the monitoring that is done. That part feels more like other teenage dystopia novels, as it's up to a few teenagers to figure out a conspiracy and make a break for it, with a nebulous figure in charge that are potentially enemies. It's engaging, and I was easily drawn into the struggle.

There are rather dramatic shifts in the tone of this story, as it moves through several genres of teen novel. That in and of itself isn't necessarily a bad thing, as there are clearly demarcated shifts in the sections of the story and most of them make sense. This is book one of a series, so the ending isn't as clean-cut as I would generally like it. This isn't a cliffhanger ending, which would be worse, but there's a general sense of incompleteness at the end of it for Harper and her friends.

I tried really hard to get into this but feel it is more a middle school level book. This is a sci fi type book focusing on Harper the main character and a sleeping illness spreading throughout. The world building was excessive and still did not make much sense. The book was overly long for the amount of information that was useful.

This was actually a 3.5 star for me.
I like Harper’s character at the beginning, she rebels against a mother who only ever seems to punish her for wanting to be a normal teenager, yet gives her no reasons as to why she’s not allowed to go to a public school and not allowed to go out anywhere with friends. When the whole neighbourhood is quarantined she doesn’t just want to sit back, she wants to find out what’s happening and if her friend’s are okay. But there’s no real character development until right near the end of the book, and even then I feel like that development is only because of the two friends she has made during her time with the Ancients

When Harper ends up with this new world with the Ancients, there is an information overload, not just for Harper, but for the reader as well. I’m a fan of world-building but this was definitely a little bit too much. This book did not go the way I thought it would, at all. I knew it was sci fi/fantasy but was not expecting aliens, but aliens is what I got. It took me quite a while to get into this book and while I enjoyed it enough to want to read the sequel when it’s out, it didn’t grip me enough for me to be dying for the next book.

› Shortly after Harper sees something strange in the desert near her family home there's an outbreak of the Mara Sleeping Syndrome. Harper's suburb is put on lockdown and she's taken by "ancients" to an alien base called Ki where they tell her she's an alien-human hybrid. At the base, Harper undergoes training, learning more about the human-alien history and the Sleeping Syndrome. She also meets other teen alien-human hybrids and teams up with a few new friends to try and figure out the "ancients" real motives.

• Writing style: I had a really hard time getting into the story. It didn't feel unique. There was too much telling and not enough showing and it's way longer than it needs to be.
• Characters: Cookie-cutter, lacking a unique voice and personality. Harper doesn't have much emotion. She's taken from everything and everyone she's ever known and then adjusts to the alien world without any anger, fear, resentment, or worry for her family or friends.
• Plot: VERY slow. Nothing much happens, but there is a lot of world-building and history revealed.
• Ending: Underwhelming.

› Final Thoughts
• I get the feeling that the publication date has been pushed in order to give this novel a little more finesse. I really wanted to like this one, but it's just not for me. I don't see myself continuing this series.

Thank you to Netgalley and publisher for the complimentary copy in exchange for my honest review.

2.5-⭐️: I struggle with this book review because I didn’t much enjoy the reading experience for about 80% of the novel, but I am invested in the story, so I hope it carries on.

I feel the need for a brief plot summary beyond the synopsis, which is unfortunately a tiny bit spoilery, because it’s hard to review the book otherwise: This a story of an alien abduction. Not just that, but our dear protagonist, Harper, is in fact an alien (gasp)! I wish the book started from there, rather than 100+ pages of people and activities which become irrelevant to the plot after the “abduction”. Then, maybe 70% of the book is about experiencing this hybrid-alien life for the first time. It’s neat, but not all that much plot-driving.

Storyline: slow, and admittedly, frustrating at times. There is far TOO MUCH information, especially in the middle, where we’re just meeting new characters which become just background noise. Peaking at the Amazon listing, it seems that 200-ish pages have been edited out, so I hope that’s enough? The story is memorable. There are details which will stay with me.

Timeline: it’s linear, which isn’t doing the plot any service. Harper and her peers are losing their memories from their time on Earth, but we, the eyeballs combing through their experiences, recall this information, so the “memory loss” stuff is a little frustrating. I can’t NOT remember Harper kicking around a soccer ball, and having two siblings, and blah-blah-blah. The story would be a lot more interesting, if her past life were something unearthed (pun-lol!) throughout.

Characters: there are too many unnecessary backstories. And why do they all look different if they’re of the same species? It’s confusing and far too much to keep straight. I just pictured them all as blank canvas cookie-cutter aliens, because the details go in-and-out. Even in the core friend group, non of the features are touched upon again, so those details were lost. Personalities were well developed, but dialogue exchanges were stale at times. There is a couple in the core group, but they have absolutely no chemistry, nor act as though they’re romantically involved. It’s a pre-established relationship, so there’s no courtship, so it feels unnecessary.

Setting: there’s just so much to take in. It’s all cool, but the descriptions felt hollow and without soul. It’s just what Harper sees, and she sees a LOT.

History: very info-dumpy; especially points where Harper is learning about hybrids, because it all felt like unnecessary detail in the end. Delivery of new info tended to be like Clippy, from Word, stopping by to say “let me show you how to use this piece of technology... which you will use this once and never again.” Or that of opening a textbook; it wasn’t immersive.

Message: beneath this “coming of alien” story, there is a nod to human suffering: people are killing the earth and killing each other for nothing. The solution is to euthanize it all? So there’s a question of sentience, and when to step in and act as gods.

I’m at a point where I can’t help but ask, “and THEN what happens?!” I would like to read the next book, so I’m curious about what changes are made to this novel (if any). The story is promising, just needs to be edited down a bit.

{Thank you NetGalley for the opportunity to review this novel.}

Harper Loomis lives in dangerous times. Or at least that’s what her overbearing mother says. The incurable Maasai Mara Sleeping Syndrome is making headlines across the United States after it infects a homeless shelter in New York. When Harper’s suburban neighbourhood in Reno, Nevada is quarantined, she’s plunged into a war with extraterrestrial underpinnings.

"Glow: Book I, Potency" is a cautionary tale of the horrors of humankind and the irreversible damage that comes with resource exploitation. Aubrey Hadley injects the right amount of technology and history into the Base of Ki, showcasing what’s next to come in the promising series.

Unfortunately this story just didn't work for me at all. I loved the premise, but the execution was poor. The pacing was off, the dialogue strange in places, repetitive, and almost like an info dump. This book was also around a third longer than it needed to be.

Glow: Book 1, Potency captured my attention with an interesting premise for sci-fi lovers and really lovely book cover. Netgalley had sent me over an email with a blurb so I took up the ARC. Aubrey Hadley has an interesting premise that she, unfortunately, failed to execute in a way that would keep my attention throughout the book. So this is a LONG read and there is perhaps too much dialogue. I found my interest in leaving around the first 20 percent of the way. I do think the setup of the indicating event worked--the local coverage of the mysterious illness, the government guarantee, the friend with the Reddit/dark web connect for insider info. But the longer and longer I read, the less immersed I was. Slow paced with a protagonist that I struggled to ultimately find Harper as compelling or really even like her beyond some sympathizing for her being separated from her family.

I received a free review copy from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

There was so much potential in this premise. A mysterious illness sweeping earth. A family with secrets. A girl who finds out she's an alien-human hybrid and is taken off of earth, where she will learn to live with other hybrids and aliens.

Unfortunately, there are a number of issues that undermine the potential of this book. One is the writing. It is largely tell writing. Dialogue is used to info dump, and there is a lot of repetition. And people taaaaalllllllkkkkkkk like that, a lot. It's at times informal, but at other times it feels lazy. There are typos and extra words and missing words throughout. Some of that is to be expected with a review copy, but it's pretty excessive.

Another issue is the overall plotting and development. Once Harper gets to the canopy where she lives with other hybrids the story stalls. There is far too much time spend on training and learning, which little of it being essential to the core plot. This book could have been two thirds of the length without losing anything.

The character development was thin. Part of this was because a lot of it is done through tell writing, and part of this is because of the repetition. Also, some of the shifts felt abrupt and underdeveloped. The descriptions in some parts feel overdone, while in other places they're lacking so you don't have a clear sense of place or character, and some of this may come down to the sheer length of the book and how unnecessary and repetitive details water down more important ones.

Having a lot of characters completely drop out of the story at the 25% mark and then even having other characters fade in and out betrays another issue with the characters; there's a lack of cohesive arcs that really put the core character(s) on a journey that requires transition. I never feel like Harper is smart or special enough to hold her own or be much of a threat because she is portrayed as willful, at times stupid, isn't observant, doesn't form a lot of obvious connections. There's no special skill that she inherently has (other than her ability that isn't present through most of the book) that sets her apart and equips her for her journey.

Although I felt the writing varied between a C and a D- I had felt the first 25% of the book offered enough to stick with the story, and I really hoped it would improve. The premise had so much potential it was disappointing that the story fizzled after 25% and never found its feet again.

This is an author that I think has potential, but needs to benefit from extensive developmental editing to continue learning their craft.

Glow by Aubrey Hadley is a book set in another world. At the beginning I was a little put off as I don't tend to like science fiction however as I read further I found the book more about survival and the characters were very likable.

If you don't like science fiction, don't despair I would liken this more to fantasy than to science fiction and I actually quite enjoyed the read.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for this ebook copy in exchange for an honest review.

I don’t know where to start. The blurb and idea of the book had great potential, but after 30% of the first part, the book was all over the place. And for me personally, it dragged. This alien world seemed a bit complicated to explain.

I don’t know why it had to end the way it did, but now that the publish date was pushed back, there will be some changes??