i'm not sure what this book was trying to achieve? It felt like it needed some editing which is a shame as the blurb sounded amazing. i'd be willing to try this one again if it had been a bit more fine tuned.

I thought the premise of the story paired with the motivation/loss of Skylar was compelling. But there were many other aspects of the story that didn't work for me. I think this is a good mystery thriller for those who still deeply enjoy YA.

found this book really interesting and really frustrating
The storyline concept is great, superheroes, villains, aliens and the destruction that comes with those relationships. However, the story itself was quite jumpy, it was full of conversation but sometimes I had no idea who was talking. It was just ok for me. I don’t think I’ll read the next two, it has so much promise and could be a really enjoyable and exciting read but it was clunky and just lacked something for me.

This a good YA fantasy.
The characters keep you engaged throughout the book which was awesome.
Unfortunately I found the story slowEd
Down in places making it hard work to continue.
Overall an okay read.

Sadly this book was archived before I could download it and so I cannot give an accurate review. I do however still hope to pick it up sometime soon as the premise of this book sounds really interesting.

I didn't like the writing style of the novel, i couldn't connect to the characters and I felt like although it has an interesting concept the book is very boring.

This had a cool concept but I couldn’t finish it because of a lot of inconsistencies with the writing and plot. I think it would have had a lot of promise with a good editor, but I found the inconsistencies too jarring.

Thank you Netgalley for sending me this arc. I will be reviewing this book in the near future with an honest rating and review.

I couldnt bring myself to enjoy this one too terribly much, which is a shame. The plot idea is absolutely brilliant, but the way it was executed was everywhere and a bit confusing to keep up with.

I am disappointed in this I wanted to like this so much, it was interesting but the book I read was far from finished and needs a lot more editing and revisions/drafts, I think it would be good but at the moment it’s just not there, sorry

Thanks to netgalley and the publisher for a free copy for an honest opinion

Not sure if this was the final draft, but this book was hella confusing. It was difficult to get into. I tried to like it but I couldn't DNF 33%

This a book you want to like. You want it to be good and it is...sort of. If you can get past the sometimes clumpy and confusing plot devices which hamper the stories progression.

The main character Skylar was likeable and very well written.

This has the makings of such a good read, all it needs is a real good edit and look at the plot devices and obviously some of the grammar (which is to be expected for an ARC)

Please note that I have one of the earlier copies of this book (I think!) so any of the grammatical issues etc which annoyed me may have been cleared up - the author has stated that the book has been reedited recently.

If you're a fan of Heroes or super powered humans, then like me you'll probably love thr concept for this book. The premise is that a bunch of teens have near death experiences and find out that they have special powers afterwards. The MC, Skylar's gift is to manipulate time. It's interestingly handled - especially for a superpower that becomes stale and implausible very quickly because of its very nature. So as I said, the concept is great.

Unfortunately the book rather lost me after that. I'm not too picky about SPaG if you tell me a good story, but the plot was very muddled and uneven. Add a large proportion of grammatical idiosyncracies and it rather sapped my enjoyment of the book.

As I said these issues may have been addressed so perhaos I'll revisit a later efition of the book at some point.

This was a difficult one for me. I always say that I believe there is an audience for every book. This book has an interesting concept but is flawed in ways that made it unenjoyable for me to read.

There were some things that were good about this book and some things that made reading it more challenging. The young people in this book are referred to as “uncommon”. They have near-death experiences that give birth to a “superpower”, an idea that was initially written skillfully by V.E. Schwab in Vicious (Villains 1).

Some of the powers in this book are really imaginative: the ability to turn everything into gold and control it, tattoos that can be pulled off the skin and become real objects, blood that causes the time to speed up dramatically. The author did a good job of exploring the nature of a world in which superpowers exist. There is a complex structure set in place to attempt to wrangle the uncommons and within that, there is a social pecking order.

Skylar’s power is complex and I assume it will be further explained in future parts of this series. She is able to manipulate time. At first, all she is able to do is stop time around her. As she learns more about her abilities, she finds that she is able to control time in smaller pockets. She is able to freeze all but certain individuals in a crowd, she is able to age herself to heal herself, and her blood has some very interesting qualities.

The main character, Skylar, was difficult to connect to. I felt that she was very one-dimensional on the page. At times when I was expecting some kind of reaction from her…there was nothing. It’s generous to say that there is an asexual character in this book. The only time it is mentioned is when she is asked directly during an intake interview. Her sexual orientation is completely irrelevant to the plot (which is fine!) so I wouldn’t go into it looking for an asexual character you may identify with.

The author writes on Goodreads that the book has been recently edited. I read some other reviews and it sounds as though it has improved dramatically from its original release, however, there are still some cumbersome areas. There are still quite a few grammatical challenges that pulled me out of the story. There were a few points at which I had to back up and re-read and was still left confused by what was supposed to be happening. The last 50 or so pages of the book was a real challenge to read. It was choppy and disconnected and I felt as though there were some paragraphs missing altogether.

3.5/5 stars.

I'm a bit conflicted on how many stars to rate this. I'm more inclined to give the first half of this book 3 stars, but the rest of the book feels more like 4 stars to me. Maybe I'll figure it out as I type out this review.

So Bright Decay is the first in a YA Sci-Fi trilogy. We're brought into a world where everyday people can develop uncommon abilities. Basically super-powered humans walk among the rest of the normal population. Some of these people live out in the open, while others prefer to be concealed. We get introduced to Skylar, who pretty much wants nothing to do with powers and everything else related to them. Unfortunately for her she gets involved in a near-death experience and guess what? She thinks she developed a power! This gave me some major VE Schwab Villains vibes because of the whole nearly dying thing, but hey it works! So now we have Skylar, who wanted to avoid super-powered anything, as she gets into this new world of hers.

As I said before, the beginning of this was rough for me. I had a hard time connecting with Skylar, and I was able to guess how things were going to go. I didn't feel like there was anything to keep me in the world, but it was still interesting enough for me to keep reading. I luckily found the second half to be much better. I enjoyed Skylar a bit more, even though she still hasn't quite won me over. The other characters we get introduced to as we delve into the super-powered world were also interesting as well. While a lot of it felt cliche, the second half moved much better than the first. I also noticed that this book was cut down a bit in terms of page length, so I believed that helped out the book.

Overall, this is a Sci-Fi book that I personally don't think stands out enough. While it has great moments and leaves an open path for the sequel, I still consider the first half to be a bit lackluster. If I was to reread this, I'd skim over the first half and go straight to the second. This would probably be one to hold off on for a bit if you're unsure. However, if you're a total Sci-Fi junkie (which I totally am not btw), this may be worth checking out.