REVIEW: The Glow

By Denise @ Life With No Plot on July 13, 2023 • ( 0 )

I just finished this book but wanted to go ahead and get the review down on my blog for the aforementioned NetGalley reasons.

About the Book

Title: The Glow

Author: Aubrey Hadley

Series: The Glow #1

Genre: YA Sci-Fi Dystopian

Pages: 216

Edition Read: eBook ARC

Dates Read: July 10-11, 2023

Blurb: A futuristic alien world, supernatural abilities, an ancient conspiracy, and the power of love and friendship; a teenage girl’s life changes when she is abducted from home and becomes the human race’s last hope to survive a deadly illness.

Harper just wants to be a normal seventeen-year-old girl, playing soccer with her friends and going to school, not understanding why her mom keeps her inside, locked away from the outside world. But once Harper stumbles upon a mysterious glowing figure in the Nevada desert, a chain-of-events is triggered that will change her life forever.

As the world experiences a deadly pandemic, Harper is taken far from home and held captive in the Base of Ki: a massive dome with a sheening white city and fantastic technology controlled by beings from another solar system. Was this why her mom was so keen to protect her?

Now she must form alliances — and fast — if she has any hope of returning to Earth. Harper’s about to learn who she can rely on and who her real friends are, embarking on a journey that will expose her to dangers she doesn’t yet understand . . .

Review

This was a really fun read. It starts off fairly simple: wanting to be a regular kid instead of a homeschooler with a super overbearing mother. Sneaking out of the house to hang out with your friends and get into some shenanigans. There is a slight undertone of threat about some illness that is killing people, but the cases are very few and very far away from Reno, Nevada.

Also, does anyone else have weird feelings reading about worldwide pandemic illnesses in fiction after the past few years of COVID, or is it just me?

The stakes rise as we find out that the illness is right there in the neighborhood and everyone must evacuate – except Harper, whose path takes a different turn, leading her to find out that she is immune to the disease, and also not entirely human. Suddenly, we are in space (space!) and Harper has to navigate this new world, figure out who to trust, and find a way to get back to her little sister.

The world building in this novel was really good. I think it’s always difficult to build an extraterrestrial society; it has to be relatable enough for readers to connect with it while still being, alien enough to be proper aliens. This works since most of the characters we meet at this part of the story are also half human hybrids trying to figure things out themselves, mostly trying to learn about this new race of beings that intend to take over and what their intensions might be.

There was suspense, there was intrigue, there was a large obstacle course sporting event. This book was just a lot of fun. GoodReads says that it is the first book in a series, and the ending definitely left things fairly open ended, but there are no other books listed on her GoodReads page or her website, which hasn’t been updated in a while. I would be interested to see where this story goes from here.

GoodReads Rating: 4 stars