the story could not thrill me.

The thing that bothered me the most is that the pacing was very off. This book is a little over 500 pages, but felt much longer. This is partly due to the fact that the story feels a lot like a road trip, there's so much driving and running around. The other factor is something I don't say often: the chapters are way too short. There are other ways to structure your text without ending up with almost 200 chapters.
One thing I did enjoy were the two protagonists.

Thank you to Netgalley for my digital copy in exchange for an honest review. And honestly? I have no idea where this one even came from...sometimes I get approached to ask if I would be interested in reading a book so I am guessing that is what happened with this one...I really don't read children's or young adult fiction much anymore...and this is why. I don't think I connect with it anymore and I can't do it justice when I give a review. I'm not saying it wasn't good because it was a good book with good characters and a good story line but at no point did it make me feel much of anything and that is what I am looking for now...I would still recommend it to anyone that does still read those genres...

I felt the book was very dense in terms of words, meaning that it got me tired over and over by having such complex phrases that could be easily done in short or simpler. that for me is a bad thing because it cuts out my interest in the book and makes me wanna give up on it. the book felt longer than it should and a bit a rip off of other fantasy books and that made it feel flat

This was longer than I anticipated and was very….wordy? Where a simple sentence could describe the situation, multiple were used. That is not a bad thing, just a style I don’t always care for. The idea behind the story was a good one and the author was very creative with it.

A classic tale of a boy from another realm. Henry's parents have kept a secret from him his entire life. They fled the land they came from when Henry was a baby because they stole a powerful artifact that would give evil forces the ability to control life. But when they fled, their memories faded until they forgot about their old life altogether. But the evil Nekura never forgot and have been hunting them down for years. Now they are closing in. When a strange girl bursts into Henry's class and yells at him to run, he isn't sure what to do. But with his best friend Charley at his side, Henry takes up the mantle of his destiny and save the realm his family once called home.

This one was okay. The plot fell a little flat. Henry wasn't the best friend to Charley. It just never fully grabbed me and kept me wanting to keep going but for younger readers this may be very captivating and engaging. It is the standard story of good vs. evil, with lots of Percy Jackson vibes. The plot is very interesting but the writing made the execution a little shaky. I think the idea is interesting enough but it was inconsistent. It also was very long and young readers likely will lose interest with something that takes them days to get through. For being that length it felt underdeveloped and the characters were lacking depth. The dialogue can be choppy and there is some gore and violence too. 2.5 stars.

The base plot line had potential and that was what originally made me request the book, but it lacked much to reach that bar.
I kind of expected more from the book, the characters were tedious and the storyline was somewhat repetitive.

You can find my full review here: https://sincerelyyoursannie.com/2022/08/09/branded-by-joseph-t-humphrey/

Thanks again to NetGalley for the opportunity to review the book.

I was drawn into this book once I got to page tw0. Finding out that you have a hidden past can be unsettling...and then finding out that it involves another reality would put me over the edge. This book has enough action to keep you drawn in and not wanting to put it down. Would have been 5 star but felt like there was an underlying message near the end that didn't quite come through.

This book gave me major Number Four vibes but also stood on its own. I was constantly trying to figure out what was going to happen next.

First off, thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for the eARC of the book. I was really excited to get into this book, especially with the cover and the description.

However, the book fell flat for a few reasons. From the beginning, this book feels like a copycat of Percy Jackson with the random occurrence and everyone pretending it didn't happen. That aside, I could never connect to the characters. The writer didn't take the time to really get the reader to care about Henry and Charley. Also, the characters talk with such melodrama that there's nothing for the reader to piece together--everything is laid out on the table in a way that is at first okay but gets really grating by the 50% mark.

BRANDED by Joseph T. Humphrey is a YA novel in which Henry starts off with a perfectly normal life, his biggest stressor being whether or not he’ll get a baseball scholarship for college. All of that gets sidelined when one of his fellow students shows up to class in tatters, shouting at him to run. Everyone, besides his friend Charley, seems to believe the classmate was just having a mental break, but Henry can’t let it go. When he begins making his own inquiries into her safety, what he uncovers is something he never could’ve imagined. Not only is he from another realm, but there are deadly creatures after him and his family, who if not stopped, plan to remove all Light from the world.

The premise of this book is captivating. The Nekura, or monsters, that Humphrey has created are terrifying, and I love how different kinds are introduced throughout the plot, each time getting scarier and more difficult to defeat. The way the Light also develops and changes in Henry and his family kept me from being able to guess at what was next, which made it an exciting action-adventure journey. Yet, it’s still interspersed with philosophical moments and quiet interpersonal exchanges, as it’s really about a family who is getting to truly know one another and themselves for the first time.

That being said, there were multiple times while reading that I found myself skimming through the description as it was unnecessary for understanding the action or the emotional arcs. Also, the conflict between Henry and Charley could’ve been more grounded to help us understand Henry’s perspective. Henry is pretty cruel to Charley, and considering her circumstances and the fact that it wasn’t fully deserved, it alienated Henry from me in the beginning.

Overall, though, BRANDED is a great novel for those who love reading about lands from the other side of the vail, a solid good vs. evil plot, found family themes, meaty backstory, and the belief that all is not as it seems. The story ends on a great cliffhanger, and I can’t wait to see how the author expands this world. With everything Humphrey brought to this first book, I could easily see this story morphing into prequels, sequels, novellas, and whatever else is in his imagination.

This book was archived before I had a chance to read it and as such, I cannot give accurate feedback. I'm grateful for the opportunity and sincerely apologetic that I was unable to read it.

Book Review: Branded by Joseph T. Humphrey
Read this if you like:
• Dystopian fiction
• YA fantasy
• Stranger Things
As a huge fantasy lover, I had high expectations for this novel. The premise is what drew me in, and I was so excited to dive in to the story. Unfortunately, I struggled to get into the story from the beginning. The writing was very hard to get in to and the whole story fell flat for me. The book felt a lot longer than it really was. I think the premise and idea of the story has a lot of potential but unfortunately this just wasn’t for me.

This novel is a morality tale, with some pretty strong religious undertones. Henry and his family are fighting on the side of the Light; his mother is a Salient, a being of Light who is connected to the Celestials. They are fighting the Nekura, beings of darkness and deception, who misdirect, lie, and try to steal the Light for the purpose of putting it out; people who are caught in their deceptions are transformed into beings of darkness, never to be redeemed. For what it is, it's well done, but the morality can be a bit in-your-face, especially in the second half of the novel, where various characters are given the opportunity to accept the Light into themselves and become one with it. I would have preferred that part to be a bit more subtle, as I found it rather off-putting.

I read this from the perspective of a licensed media specialist and teacher considering a purchase for a school. Dystopian fiction is always popular, but there needs to be an element that makes it stand out from the crowded field. The cover is intriguing and so is the plot.

As I read, I feel confusion. That’s ok in the beginning, but I expect that to settle as I learn the author’s writing style and the exposition. However, I continue to experience confusion and have questions consistently as I read. This book needs a good editor. There is potential, but this seems like it is self-published.

adventurous tense medium-paced
3.0

Had high expectations of this book as the synopsis was very interesting and it had been a while since I last read YA contemporary fantasy. And while it did deliver the elements that I expected, it felt lackluster. On a technical standpoint, the writing was not... consistent in every chapter. There were chapters that were written with eloquent prose and others that were straightforward. The multiple POVs were a bit confusing as there was no heading or indication of the switch in the chapter titles.

And for a 400ish page book, there were over 100 chapters, which would have been reasonable had many of the chapters not been merely a break in the scene. This amount of chapters made reading this very slow, as the tension which was built is dropped the very next page then dragged up and then dropped—rinse and repeat. Having cliff-hangers in chapters is a great idea, but when your chapters are two pages long and have a "twist" in every last one, the more important cliff-hangers end up being predictable, or at the very least do not evoke the as much of an emotional response as planned.

I understand that there is little world-building here as to open up opportunities for a sequel, but what little information gathered was in the form of a 'tell not show' and oftentimes it is repeated throughout (thus shortening the chapters even more). The characters felt more like TV show versions of what TV execs think high school students are—a weird non-balance of too formal speech and too volatile emotions. It read less YA for young adults and teenagers (16-19) and more on for middle-grade (13-15) as I could still see myself enjoying this when I was younger.

Though I did have a gripe with the pacing, there was a lot of interesting bits in this story that I hope, in the future books, will be explored more and given more substance to.

Content Warnings
Graphic: Gore, Bullying, Death of parent, and Violence
Moderate: Ableism
Minor: Drug use and Drug abuse

Big thanks to the publisher for providing me this ARC via NetGalley. This does not in any shape or form influence my review on this book.

First of all, before I started my review, I would like to thank Netgalley and the publisher to provide an e-ARC of this book for an honest review.

DNF at 20 %

Yeah and anyway let's just go to the pros and cons of this book.

Pros: this book is so imaginative, and I like how the author created the tension between the characters.
Cons: there's a bunch of.. some kind of info dumping(?), some repetition, and also I couldn't connect to the characters.

Here's a few reason why I put it down (or I couldn't finish it):

This book feels flat, the pacing is wonky (and it's enough to made me stressed out) and also, it feels like it's completely under developed. I often wondering if this book has been edited, since the writing is so amateurish.

Overall, 2 stars for this book

I found the idea to be interesting, but unfortunately it was very hard to get into and I did not enjoy the writing style. I also found it to be much longer than it needed to be and therefore took me a very long time to finish and I never really got into the story.

I like giving lesser known books and authors a chance and this cover absolutely intrigued me. Plus, YA fantasy is one of my go-to genres. Unfortunately, the story could not thrill me.
The thing that bothered me the most is that the pacing is very off. This book is a little over 500 pages, but felt much longer. This is partly due to the fact that the story feels a lot like a road trip, there's so much driving and running around. The other factor is something I don't say often: the chapters are way too short. There are other ways to structure your text without ending up with almost 200 chapters.
One thing I did enjoy were the two protagonists. I especially liked Charley, she was a really well fleshed-out character.

I think that a story about high school students should carry the dialogue and interest of high school students. The description was stilted, and it seemed like the author, while desperately attempting to write from the perspective of teenagers, fell woefully short. The writing style is more suited for 10-year-olds than any audience older, simply because it doesn't make sense unless you have no concept of high school society. I made it to Chapter 7 before deciding that, while this is an extremely easy read, the events occurring feel too tossed in and not thought out, with that the creepy happenings could realistically happen out of nowhere, but the reactions of the students would be far more dramatic. Overall, unless you enjoy reading a children's book with the guise of following the lives of high school students, don't read this.

Synopsis: “Henry Murphy’s parents never told him he was from another realm. They couldn’t, because they have become as unaware as Henry. Everything was forgotten—memories siphoned away by the dark force that stalked them. For the last seventeen years, Henry has been living a lie.

All those years of hiding have been compromised. Henry’s parents fled as refugees after stealing the location of the furnace—a source of power that would have allowed the Nekura uncontested rule over all life. But with their memories silenced, the Nekura have closed in on them unnoticed.

The first warning was the screaming girl. After she broke into Henry’s high school classroom and screamed for him to run, she was hauled away and disappeared. The only friend Henry finds to help him is Charley, a strong-willed orphan girl with a fractured past.

Henry is thrust into a reality he never knew existed and must fight against sinister creatures he cannot touch for reasons he doesn’t understand. What he doesn’t know can still hurt him, and it is hunting him down. Their only hope is the Light—a legendary force that bestows intangible power for those connected to it. Henry must uncover the shrouded memory of his family’s past and race to find the furnace before the Nekura tear his family apart and destroy both worlds in the process. Henry will learn the heartache of the forgotten, the joy of the reclaimed, strength beyond himself, and the unbreakable ties that bind family together.”

Review: Branded by Joseph T. Humphrey was a fun and wild ride. It was fast-paced and full of action in every chapter. This book is good for the YA audience more than a middle-grade novel. The fantasy was captivating, and in many ways, it reminded me of a mix between Stranger Things, The Matrix, and The Neverending Story. I had a hard time putting it down; I was sucked right into the world Joseph created for his readers. I appreciated the short chapters because they didn’t feel like fillers. Instead, they moved the plot right along. Branded had a deep sense of family, which was beautiful, and connections between characters that remain memorable.

I would recommend this book to teenagers (YA & NA), as well as adults, if they’re in the mood for a fun fantasy full of adventure and action.

CW: Bullying, death

Thank you to the publisher and Netgalley for the e-arc in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own.