I received this book from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

I'm rating this a 3 because I am not sure how I feel about this book. I like the story of line of the book but it seemed to be too much.

This book is about a 17 year old girl, living in Reno with a family who doesn't quite understand her. A mysterious illness called the Maasai Mara Sleeping Syndrome is spreading in select areas around the globe. The illness hits her neighborhood in Reno and she, unlike her family is unable to get out and ends up quarantined to her house. Then the story just takes a major plot twist and lost me.

It's not that the story was bad or anything. To me it was slow paced and just had too much explanation or plot changing. It seemed to be something more around each corner and I struggled with that. I never really fell in love with the characters and had no connection to them. I think with removing some of the extra and doing some tweaking this could be an excellent book.

I loved reading about the Masai Mara Sleeping Syndrome but stopped reading soon after the author sort of gave up on it. I downloaded this a while ago and, as someone else has pointed out, publication has been pushed back. I hope they sort out the plot issues because the blurb currently does not match the content.

A shame because there's some really good potential in there that I would be interested to read if an editor is allowed to really sink their teeth into this.

So, I just checked Amazon and it seems that publication of this book has been pushed back some months. I think (hope) that major changes will be made in that time. It does mean, however, that much of what I say in my review may no longer applyl to the book once it’s out there. That would be good.

At the time I’m writing this, the book has issues.

The main problem – and a problem that eclipses almost everything else – is that there are about 8 bajillion ideas in one plot. I mean, if the author had a thought, it made it into the book! The book needs direction, tightening, and pruning. The main thread of the plot is lost through most of the book as we explore every idea the author ever had. Mind you, they’re fun ideas! They just need to be separated into more books.

Finally the book simply…ends. Not a cliffhanger. It just…ends. I was reading this on Kindle and I kept swiping ineffectually at it, trying to find the end of the book.

So. I hope and imagine that by the time you read this, it will be a vastly different book. Good ideas, poorly presented.

*ARC Provided via Net Galley

What a fantastic read this was! It kept me guessing every step of the way. I loved the characters and felt like I just wanted to read more about them.

I read this book all in one sitting, forgoing food along the way. It was that good! I look forward to more from this author!

This book was so hard for me to finish. I tried to like it but I felt it was dragging and too much information. I love Science Fictions books but this just won't be on a list for me to recommend. I am sure someone will like it but, I was trying hard to just get thru the book. I didn't get the point of the book. There were interesting aspects of the book but not enough for me to enjoy.

I received an eARC via Netgalley; all opinions are my own.

I was originally interested in this because the description sounded mysterious and the cover is beautiful. Unfortunately, I just didn't end up liking it. I will say that I am more of a plot driven reader and most of this book felt more character driven. This made the beginning a very slow read. It seemed like it took some time for Harper to get to the training/testing location. Once we were there, it seemed like it took up over half of the book before the story progressed to the next part of the plot with Harper getting her assignment. This is about where it started to pick up because we were getting a little more action and the characters were discovering new information.

This book was just not for me and I will not be reading the sequel. I do think that this might appeal to people who like slow build-ups and character driven stories.

Firstly I would like to thank NetGalley for allowing me to read and review this eARC.

Where oh where do I even begin with this review. I do know actually, let me start by saying that the blurb is one of the most misleading blurbs I have ever read. The Maasai Mara Sleeping Syndrome is mentioned in the first quarter of the book and then almost completely forgotten. The blurb makes it sound as if its all about that but it barely exists. Instead we're left with 700 pages of a complete lack of plot and character ARCs. This book is far far too long; there's at leas 300 - 400 pages that should be cut out of this book completely. I read the first 25% of this book quite a while ago and just had to stop reading because it was so bad. I almost DNF'd it but I only didn't because i'd DNF'd two other books recently and I was feeling bad.

This book follows the main character of Harper, a 17 year old who finds out she's immune to a syndrome that is killing off everyone she knows. Harper's family go into hiding before she can go with them and she ends up being captured along with her brother and taken into "space". And it is at this point that this book really goes downhill. You see, Harper isn't just a normal teenage girl, she is actually half-alien who has been watched all her life by her mother and the "sentinels". Her brother isn't her brother, he isn't related to any of them; he was sent as a guard to watch over her and her sister.

Let me talk about the characters first; Harper is not an engaging or compelling main character. She is a 17 year old who has no personality of her own and no thoughts of her own. She tends to just do whatever it is the people around her are doing. When she finds out there's a virus killing almost everyone around her, she acts like its just an inconvenience and not something that is actually life threatening. When she goes into space and learns she's half-alien she doesn't get any better. She's honestly just dull and not a compelling lead character. The other main characters are her friends Jacqueline and Adam (also half aliens) who befriend Harper and convince her that they need to escape for... some reason that's never fully explored (I will come back to this). None of the characters are overly well developed and are not really likeable. Their motivations aren't clear and they don't go on any arcs throughout the book.

In terms of the plot...
The first 20% of this book isn't completely awful; there is some action and interesting plot points but as soon as Harper gets to space with the aliens the book completely loses it's momentum and just stalls completely. One of the main issues with this book is the unnecessary filler in this book; about 40-50% of this book is us watching Harper go about her daily business training with the aliens. And literally nothing happens. The author seems to think we need to be told every little thing that happens in this book; just give us a nice summary and cut out 300 unnecessary pages please. It's honestly just very boring most of the time, and to be honest the last 50% of the book I had to skim read because it was just too dull.

I wouldn't say that this book is well paced either; because nothing happens throughout most of the book the ending becomes really anticlimactic and I just didn't care about whether or not they escaped. Even after they escape we get pages of them just chilling in the woods. This book just really needed to be edited better.

In terms of their whole plan to escape; regardless of what life is like with the aliens they know that the humans will not welcome them back and don't want the half aliens to exist. Further to this, Harper and her friends don't look human anymore after wiping away all that pesky human skin dust with bouncy balls (don't even get me started). There is literally no real explanation of why they want to escape other than one o them's hunch that the aliens haven't got their best interests at heart. But nothing comes of that either; it's literally all pointless!!!! I'd say this is the case with most of the book in that things are hinted at but never explored; it's clear that it is being set up for a sequel but it really makes this a jarring read because nothing seems to come to a conclusion. Harper and her friends just swap an alien prison for a human prison.

They also give the hybrids powers; Adam has a photographic memory, and Harper can "glow" and transport. But apart from Adam using his power to remember where they put all the discs, nothing seems to come from these powers either. We get a couple of scenes of Harper trying to learn how to use her power, with the delightful Jacqueline unexpectedly strangling her on one occasion to assist, but again it never really goes anywhere.

Overall this is a hugely disappointing read; it sounds like a good sci-fi mystery book but it really isn't It is far far too unnecessarily long and really not well paced. The characters aren't memorable or particularly likeable, and the ending is anticlimactic. The execution of this book doesn't match the blub and it feels very misleading. I honestly struggled to even rate this one star and wouldn't recommend this book.

I am going to leave you with some of the more... interesting quotes that I came across whilst reading this book:

"I look at my fingers, covered in the human cell dust. My old skin. Turned to ash. Just like that"

"Thankfully, amazingly, my suit doesn't load up like a diaper. It must somehow open on its own.
I lose balance squatting and fall backward, trying to catch myself before I land in a puddle of my own shit"

"a warm sensation brushes between my butt cheeks. I jump up, turning around to see what's just violated me. The hole is still there with a fountain of silver foam balls shooting up at a sharp angle and then falling back down into the hole"

"she sniffs and someone hands her a silver ball, like the ones in the toilet hole. She sticks her nose on it"

"she sucks the particles through her nose and then exhales. The particles bound from her nose to the projection in a stream, like she's breathing out smoke"

"'How do I take this off to shower?' 'You don't need to remove it. Apparently your clothes have pores that open up and flush out body secretions or something? Stand like a starfish, with your arms and legs spread apart. Open your mouth too'"

"'Where the hell does the piss go?' Tucker says,
'It is stored in the suits.'
'Where?' Adam says,
'Veins, where it is dehydrated and turned into very light particles"

Looking for your next young adult book about aliens? Than this may be the one for you. At an epic six hundred and twenty pages, this story is gripping and unique. The cover is beautiful, and it's really the reason that I picked it up in the first place, before even reading the description. It would make a beautiful addition to anyone's bookshelf, and I think that it's a story I'll remember for a long time, not only because it's a series, but also because it's really interesting.

Following Harper, a seventeen year old girl living in Nevada, she lives her life a little sheltered. Lately she's only able to hang out with her friends when she sneaks out, because of her seemingly overprotective mother, who not only home school's her, but ever since she found out about a new kind of sleeping sickness invading the world, she's not allowing her outside either, in case she catches it. After all, she doesn't want one of her daughters to die.

The story begins with Harper running into her house carelessly after sneaking out and running through the desert. She sees something that she can't believe with her own eyes, and she's convinced that she's part of some kind of conspiracy because of it. After all, who sees a shadow that glows rainbow in the middle of the desert in the middle of the night? She swears she's never going to sneak out again after that, but of course, she does.

After that event, however, things start to change for her. After returning home from babysitting one day, she logs onto facebook to see a video of a man literally disappearing. After that, not only the video disappears, but her facebook account does too. Feeding into her conspiracy theory paranoia, she sneaks out to warn her friend, but returns home to find her house empty, and her neighbourhood being locked down in a quarantine. Her neighbour has caught the sleeping sickness, and the government isn't going to let it spread any further. Her family has snuck out before the borders were set in place, and she's left alone in her home, until she finds a familiar face. That's when things start to take an even worse turn however. She's abducted by aliens, and her new life begins.

This book was so different compared to the other books I've been reading lately. I'm always into a good first person alien book, and this one wasn't any different. The only problem I really have with it, is that it was so long that I kind of lost interest at some parts and then came back to it. I would have liked to see it split into maybe two books, because of that.

The characters are really interesting, my favourite being Harper of course, since she's the main point of the story. The aliens in this book were so different than other aliens I've read about, and I really enjoyed getting to know them and their world, as well as their technology. I'm really excited to see what happens in the next book, though I'm kind of hoping that it will be a little shorter. I think this book has the potential to have a lot of fans, and I'm interested to see where the rest of the story takes us.

Thanks for reading!
(Radioactivebookreviews.wordpress.com)

I thought I was signing on for a fun ya scifi, not a confusing info dump. My advice to the author and publisher is get thee to an editor, in fact go to a few editors. This book needs cut in half and heavily edited to make sense and be interesting. I dnf'd at 20% because I was so bored. So much is thrown at you and none of it is enticing. The characters are caricatures of whatever role they play. The mom freaks out over every little thing Harper does in fear she will get sick and then is super calm when she's actually in danger of getting sick. Wtf?
Whoever wrote the book description had the same problem most of us readers did. We have no idea what the plot is and have wandered off to scrub the bathroom with a toothbrush to avoid wadding through this book. It must get better at some point because there are a few good reviews. I wish I could see what those reviewers saw; the premise was intriguing but the executive is lacking.
ARC provided by NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

Thank you to Ruby & Topaz Publishing and NetGalley for an advance copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

This book just wasn't for me. The beginning did draw me in but it wasn't long before the storyline lost my attention. Far too slow moving with a large part of the book where I just didn't care what happened. The last few chapters did start to grab my focus again and the book ended in such a way that it had you curious as to what future events could be in store for the characters. Just not enough for me to be interested in any future installments of this series.
This would probably be a good introduction to this genre for a young reader but for me it just wasn't a sophisticated enough narrative.

This book has an interesting premise for an apocalyptic story and for once a YA book that doesn’t involve a romance between the female protagonist and one or two boys. I am not sure what age range it is actually intended for, middle school or high school and up. The writing feels like it should be middle school. Older readers that like YA might be put off by the writing and the younger readers my not like the length and the long descriptions and plethora of details (some of which are difficult to visualize).

I was looking through the books on netgalley one day, and came across this book.  It looked interesting, and the idea is pretty cool.  For the most part, I didn't like Glow.

It started off really good, and I think that's why I ended up being so disappointed in it.  Harper has this really protective mother who homeschool's Harper and her sister.  Harper's barely allowed to the leave the house, and her mom has one of the neighbors watching the house in case Harper leaves.  You're not really sure why her mom's like this, especially since it seems like things were like this before the Maasai Mara Sleeping Syndrome.

At first, I was definitely intrigued, and it seemed like we had a mystery on our hands.  We eventually learn what's going on, but that's when the book started to lose me.  Once her neighborhood goes on lockdown, and she gets whisked away on this...adventure, I started to lose interest.  It was hard to keep track of what was going on, and it had the potential to be really interesting.  Instead, I was really bored, and it was page after page about why one group was better than another, and Harper trying to figure out this new world.

It's sci-fi and it felt like I was reading about the end of the world.  I expected a lot more action and excitement and danger, and I didn't get any of it.  It felt really slow, and we're told things as opposed to seeing them.  It was a lot longer than it needed to be, and too much time was spent explaining things.  It looks like this book is the first book in a series, even though I couldn't find any information about a book two.  I expect to see the world and story get set up but we got more than what we needed.

I'm not interested enough to pick up any other books in this series (if there are any) and I'm not completely sure where things are headed in any future books.  With the how the book ended, it seemed like there was going to be a lot of waiting until the next thing happens, and I don't particularly want to read through pages and pages of Harper waiting until the next big thing happens.  I could be wrong, but I just don't particularly want to find out.  Especially if it's anything like this book.  Hopefully not though.

My Rating: 1 star.  I like the idea, and it started off really good!  It just got bogged down in the details, and I really did expect a sci-fi story involving aliens with an apocalyptic feel to be more exciting and action-packed.

This story was entertaining and it had so much potential. The characters were enjoyable, the world-building is very detailed, and the complexity of it all is truly interesting. I think it could've been shorter, sometimes I felt like I was being given too much information for my brain to retain. But other than that I liked the story.
If you love Sci-fi YA with well-thought dynamics and world-building, I'm sure this is the book for you.

Thank you to #NetGalley for an advance readers copy of Glow: Book 1, Potency in exchange for an honest review.

Aubrey Hadley's novel Glow: Book ! Potency took me a while to get into. Unlike many other novels where readers are drawn in quickly, this one takes the reader a long time to get vested in the story. It took me a while to finish this novel,

This was not for me. I felt the character of Harper didn't do anything to help herself and kept making poor decisions to move the plot along. The world building wasn't enough to make the storyline convincing.
Thank you to Netgalley and the Publisher for the opportunity to read and review this title. All opinions are my own.

Good concepts but this book dragged. There was too many unnecessary details. It is refreshing for ya book with female protagonist to not have love interest,. If there is a sequel a expect there will be.

I really had to force myself to finish this book, but I'm giving it two stars instead of one because I did really enjoy the first hundred pages or so. It looks like Glow is going to have at least one sequel, but I won't be reading it.

First of all, such a long book with soo much information. It felt daunting, as it seemed the story wasn't moving anywhere. It is hard to explain of what I did and didn't enjoy, as most have been forgotten by the time I got done with the book.
The story is of a typical teenage girl Harper who is actually more special than she thinks. She's an alien hybrid, with special abilities. The premise seemed intriguing, but the way this story was told, just didn't do it for me. The conversational style, from a teenager's perspective was annoying mostly.
Most of the world building was done unnecessarily. There was so much information thrown in, but the main things were left out. The way things were revealed, were also a bit anticlamatic. For example, when Harper is taken by the aliens, she is explained the alien version of what is happening. And she accepts everything, because she has already forgotten her past life. When she is explained what has happened to her memories, she just accepts it. There's never any kind of emotional connection to anything that is happening to her. It seemed very simple and plain.
The same with the end. It felt very anticlamatic. The whole escape planning took so long, and when it finally happened it went off without any hitch, or any emotions at things that were supposed to throw Harper off. She just kept accepting everything that was thrown her way.
The whole book felt very anticlamatic. There was never any drama, just some weird teenage talk and thoughts.
It might have been a good premise for a book, but it wasn't executed in a way that I could enjoy reading it.

I loved the blurb of this book and was really excited to read it. Unfortunately, it archived before I could read it.