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stardustandrockets's review against another edition
adventurous
challenging
dark
emotional
funny
mysterious
sad
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
5.0
The Bright Sessions has been one of my favorite podcasts for years. When these companion novels were announced I was beyond excited—especially A Neon Darkness because it's the origin story of my favorite character, Damien.
This book was everything I wanted. Insight into why Damien is the way he is, how he got the name Damien, and just how broken of a human he is. Struggling to control his power of persuasion, he doesn’t always know what’s real when it comes to other people. Do they genuinely like him or do they only like him because he wants them to like him? This book focuses on the present while giving little glimpses of the past and what led Robert (Damien) to LA in the first place, the loss of Them. There are also little snippets from the perspective of the other characters prevalent to the story that help push the story along. I don’t always like little interjections like that, but I think the author used them sparingly and in a way that helped the overall story instead of taking away. Because of what Damien can do and what was going on it was nice to have a little peek into the other character’s minds at times. This was especially true knowing that the book doesn’t start out from Damien’s POV (which was a little confusing at first, but was soon cleared up as to why this was the case).
While the whole story isn’t happy (much of what we know about Damien from the podcast isn’t happy, so I don’t know why I expected this story to be happy), it definitely explains a lot about everyone’s favorite (or not so favorite) villain from The Bright Sessions. It breaks my heart knowing what he's gone through and how he can't really trust anyone or himself because of what he can do. Overall I am extremely happy knowing more about Damien and what led him to the events of the podcast. It’s an origin story more than anything and I hope you’ll pick it up. You don’t have to know anything about the podcast to enjoy it, but you’ll definitely get a lot more out of the story if you do. This is another excellent book by Lauren Shippen.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Death, Abandonment, Alcohol, Cursing, Emotional abuse, Fire/Fire injury, Kidnapping, Murder, Toxic friendship, Violence, and Torture
Moderate: Addiction, Drug use, and Self harm
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