I was really drawn to the premise of this one but admit I was skeptical reading that this was being compared to Tartt’s writing style. On a line-by-line basis or paragraph basis this does feel true early on, but I felt this book didn’t totally succeed in turning the beautiful lines into a coherent, fleshed out story.

There are many parts to this slow, melancholic tale. Sylvia works at a funeral home, obsessed with finding g justice for her husband’s death at the hands of a hit and run driver, all while her town is in a frenzy over the arrival of St. John’s comet. I truly enjoyed the relationships highlighted here- between Sylvia and her mother in law and between Sylvia and the astronomer who discovered the comet.

I felt the obsession/mystery aspect with her husband’s death maybe was not quite as intriguing as it could have been, but did add tension. I also wasn’t totally sold on the cult aspect.

Definitely interesting with some beautiful lines and tone I enjoy, but not fully able to come together for me.

I received an eARC via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

Bright Objects by Ruby Todd is a good mystical thriller with a dash of romance and astronomy! 🤯☄️

Blurb: Sylvia Knight is losing hope that the person who killed her husband will ever face justice. Since the night of the hit-and-run, her world has been shrouded in hazy darkness—until she meets Theo St. John, the discoverer of a rare comet soon to be visible to the naked eye.

As the comet begins to brighten, Sylvia wonders what the apparition might signify. She is soon drawn into the orbit of local mystic Joseph Evans, who believes the comet’s arrival is nothing short of a divine message. Finding herself caught between two conflicting perspectives of this celestial phenomenon, she struggles to define for herself where the reality lies. As the comet grows in the sky, her town slowly descends further and further into a fervor over its impending apex, and Sylvia’s quest to uncover her husband’s killer will push her and those around her to the furthest reaches of their very lives.

🌟🌟🌟🌟

I enjoyed reading Bright Objects! Although the writing was difficult to follow at times, it was a gripping enough story to keep me at the edge of my seat. Sylvia is an amazing FMC who is caught between two widely different spectrums, one scientific and one spiritual (?). Her race to decide who to trust before a life-changing comet hits her small Australian town was intriguing and suspenseful! I never would have guessed the revelations at the end. All in all, a great read if you love space and unsolved/unexplained mysteries. 😊💫

Thank you to @simonbooks for sending me a gifted ARC copy and giving me the opportunity to read/review! 🤩📚

🏷️: #BrightObjects #RubyTodd #SimonBooksBuddy #review #bookrecommendation #bookstagram

An unusual novel about grief and a comet. Set in a small town in Australia, it's the story of Sylvia, who, mourning the death of her husband and working in a funeral parlor, comes to focus on the St John Comet. And then she meets Theo St John,, the astronomer who found and named it. This is heavy on the philosophy and would have benefited from a paring but it's an emotional and thoughtful read. Thanks to Netgalley for the ARC. It might be a love it or hate it proposition but I come down in the middle-entranced by Sylvia and yet frustrated with what surrounds her.

Bright Objects was an obvious mixture of the Hale Bop Comet cult and Jonestown. Underneath that though, it is about grief. And the grief different characters are dealing with makes them look for relief in some very strange places. The story just kind of rolled along with not much really happening until the very end. Then it became an altogether different book. After all is said and done, I could not believe the choices that the characters made. Could not find a place to hold onto this book.

I really liked this book. It was sci/fi but really it was literary, about grief guilt and loss. Sylvie struggled with the loss of her husband and the guilt she had over surviving the accident. So she sets out to find the deeper meaning of her life. Very engaging.

This was a captivating read with complex characters. I enjoyed the theme of astronomy and the effect on human behaviors, as well as the bit of mystery.
Many thanks to Simon & Schuster and to Netgalley for providing me with a galley in exchange for my honest opinion.

This was a slow burn but by the last page I was left with some serious goosebumps. I do wish it was shorter but it was a beautiful and intense read nonetheless.

In this complex, thrilling domestic thriller, ideal for lovers of Laura Dave's, a woman lies to protect her family, and one deception leads to another.

What a fantastic book! At first, this book seemed predictable; the reader got the impression that they understood the structure of a traditional thriller and could guess where the story would go. I was mistaken in this assumption! The divergent viewpoints present various angles on the same issue. John's character is developed well. Is he a jerk or a family man supporting his spouse? There were moments in the novel when I felt like my moral compass changed—after all, don't you do what you have to if a mafia boss is after you? I had a great time reading this book.

It's hard to believe that Ruby Todd's Bright Objects is a debut novel. Todd writes this example of contemporary literary fiction with a sure hand and many talents. The story of Sylvia, a young woman widowed two years ago in a car accident that left her critically injured and on the verge of taking her own life when she meets Theo St. John, discoverer of a comet that in a few months will reach its brightest states right there, over the town of Jericho, brightens and wanes along with the comet. The climax of the novel, into which many themes and subplots are woven, finds Sylvia and Theo unwitting participants in a ritual designed and carried out by Josep, the leader of a small cult. Bright Objects rings with authenticity and raises many questions of spirituality, ethics, and love for readers to ponder. Bright Objects will appeal to lovers of literary fiction, literary mysteries, and lyrical writing.

I was born under the Hale-Bopp comet & so was immediately drawn to the premise of this novel. The writing style is beautiful, & is the star of the book. The characters were good, but I had a hard time connecting to the MC. The plot built up after a slightly slow middle, & although I saw the twist coming, I was still very invested in this book. The main theme of grief did a great job in making me wonder what was reality & what was just the MCs perspective.

Thank you to Simon & Schuster and NetGalley for the ARC.

In a message from the editor in this ARC, he describes Bright Objects by Ruby Todd as loosely inspired by the Heaven’s Gate cult. I feel like this might be a little bit of a misstep to associate the two. There are some similarities, in that the book also features a cult that viewed a comet in the 1990s as a sign that they should all kill themselves. But the book only talks about these events at the very end, and it isn’t the driving force behind the novel.

In actuality, Bright Objects is a super slow-burn story about a woman who is still trying to recover from the hit-and-run death of her husband two years prior. She uses her grief from the accident to pursue leads to track down who was responsible, and then finds herself drawn to a mysterious man that shows up to her work. There are threads of the cult that get introduced, but it felt much more like a secondary storyline to me than the prominent one.

This book is definitely not for readers that like a lot of action and twists and turns. Todd’s writing is very pedantic; I did feel like her style was so different that I found myself having to read sentences more than once just to get the hang of what she was trying to say. Maybe this just speaks to my intelligence level, but this made the book a little more challenging to read. That’s not to say this was a bad thing (I certainly learned some new vocab words!), but it could be a turn-off for some readers.

Although I didn’t necessarily enjoy every aspect of this reading experience, I can say that at the end of the book, I felt more warmly towards the characters and the overall plot. Everything was wrapped up nicely in the end (even if it was a tad predictable), and I felt like I understood the characters a lot better by the completion of the story.

All of this to say, there’s only a specific group of readers I’d recommend this to. As an ephemeral view of the world (with lots of astronomy thrown in), it definitely won’t be everyone’s cup of tea. But I’m very glad I read it and would be interested to see what Todd will take on for her second book.

4.25 ⭐️ overall.

Sylvia Knight’s first person narrative comes to us in three parts. I found Dark Skies (part 1) rather slow and even alittle draining to read - but Closer and Departures (parts 2 and 3) really came together and I was hooked me.

I chose to read this book without context of any real world events it was loosely based on so that I could immerse myself in the main character’s world and take the book on face value, and inevitably that allowed me to really enjoy the way it unfolded without feeling like I knew what was coming.

Ruby Todd writes with distinct beauty and I thoroughly enjoyed how she guides us through Sylvia’s journey. .

I was fortunate enough to nab this one as an ARC from both Net Galley as an e-book and through Goodreads as a physical book giveaway. Thanks to Simon & Schuster for the advanced reading opportunities in exchange for an honest review.

WOW. I loved this book! Most of the story is in the narrator's head, the dialogue is limited and even sometimes the dialogue is presented descriptively rather than actively, and yet I found the story easy to follow and steadily placed. Through the whole tale, as you follow the narrator, you wonder about her sanity and what's real, yet I wouldn't label this as an unreliable narrator--it's just grief and the realness of it, presented so honestly in all its ugliness by the author.

The setting and characters are amazing. It was hard to know who to like and root for, and that's exactly as it should be for those gnarly twists to hit. I was surprised how twisty and unpredictable and thrilling this story is as I was expecting something more like literary fiction and drama. But this novel has a rollercoaster of emotions and huge personalities wrapped up in a cult and astrological madness.

This book is thoughtful, creative, emotional, and thrilling. I loved it!

Thank you to Simon and Schuster and NetGalley for an eARC to read and review voluntarily.

Well-written story
of grief, survival, guilt, death,
cults and the cosmos.
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️


I write haiku reviews but am happy to provide more feedback.

Bright Objects was a beautifully written novel surrounding grief and hopelessness through our main character Sylvia, while the comet St. John travels across the sky, altering the path of a small Australian town.

I'd recommend this story, that often reads as poetry, to readers who love a combination of astronomy, mystery, and literary fiction.

i thought this was okay.. the author has a lot of room to improve on for her next week, it seemed promising

If you are a lover of astrology, love stories and the Divine Universe than this is a spiritual sweet book that must be added to your reading list. I enojyed reading this book every night.

In "Bright Objects," Sylvia, the protagonist, is caught up in a hit-and-run accident that claims the life of her husband. Despite her conviction about the identity of the culprit, no one has been held accountable, leaving her on edge. The story delves into themes of mystery, thriller, and grief, intertwined with a compelling cast of characters and an eerie Heaven's Gate vibe. This book is a compelling must-read!

A strange and haunting story. Sylvia is still grieving the death of her husband and works at a funeral home. While she provides sympathetic care to customers an anger burns deep inside as se is sure that her husband's death was not an accident and some members in the village know what truly happened. The backdrop of this story is that a once in a lifetime comet will pass by. The village has a front row seat to the sightings and every day a new spectacle appears to commercialize the event.

By happenstance, the discoverer of the comet, astronomer Theo St. John comes into Sylvia's orbit (!) as does a man named Joseph. Both have great impact on her life. As the comet draws closer and the mania about the event increases, Sylvia continues to grieve her husband but also take a chance on love. For some, this is a thriller, but for me it was a slow burn of romance and astronomy. #simonandschuster #brightobjects #rubytodd

FIrst, thanks to NetGalley and Simon & Schuster for providing me with an advanced copy of this book in exchange for my fair and honest review.

I mostly enjoyed this novel. I was intrigued with the setting and the approaching fictional St, John;s comet, probably inspired by Hale-Bopp in 1997. You'll see why as you read the book. We get a few surprises along the way, along with a nice trip Down Under.

The characters are interesting and generally well-developed, although they didn't quite "breathe" for me. The main character, Sylvia, often did really dumb things, IMHO, but that seems typical of most heroines, else they wouldn't end up in distress.

There's a mystery involved, and I'm always intrigued by a mystery. It's pretty much what kept me reading, and I'll admit to staying up late to finish it!