Book Review: Glow by Amy Kathleen Ryan

Title: Glow

Author: Amy Kathleen Ryan
Series: Sky Chasers #1
Pages: 385
Publisher: Macmillan
Date of Publication: 7th October 2011
Source: Publisher*
Synopsis from Goodreads: What if you were bound for a new world, about to pledge your life to someone you'd been promised to since birth, and one unexpected violent attack made survival—not love—the issue?

Out in the murky nebula lurks an unseen enemy: the New Horizon. On its way to populate a distant planet in the wake of Earth's collapse, the ship's crew has been unable to conceive a generation to continue its mission. They need young girls desperately, or their zealous leader's efforts will fail. Onboard their sister ship, the Empyrean, the unsuspecting families don't know an attack is being mounted that could claim the most important among them...

Fifteen-year-old Waverly is part of the first generation to be successfully conceived in deep space; she was born on the Empyrean, and the large farming vessel is all she knows. Her concerns are those of any teenager—until Kieran Alden proposes to her. The handsome captain-to-be has everything Waverly could ever want in a husband, and with the pressure to start having children, everyone is sure he's the best choice. Except for Waverly, who wants more from life than marriage—and is secretly intrigued by the shy, darkly brilliant Seth.

But when the Empyrean faces sudden attack by their assumed allies, they quickly find out that the enemies aren't all from the outside.

My Thoughts:
There's rather a lot of hype going around for this book at the moment, so while I was super excited to read it, I was also rather hesitant. Lately with books that have been hyped up a lot, I've not been liking them as much because I've expected too much from them. So I waited until after the US publication so the hype had died down a bit, and I'm happy to say that I really enjoyed it, a lot more than I think I would have, had I read it earlier :)

Glow has been compared a lot to The Hunger Games, but I can't see any links between, other than the fact that they are both dystopian. Seriously, I don't understand where that is coming from... Anyway, Glow takes place in space, on two identical spaceships that are filled with two completely different groups of people. Waverly and Kieran are the oldest of the first generation of children to be born in space, and they are planning their life together on the ship, when they are rudely interrupted and split up for what seems like it could be forever. Now they have to try and get back together, and try not to let anyone die in the process...

The book was split into parts, and each part was about either Waverly or Kieran, or at the beginning and the end, about them both. I really liked Waverly's parts, way more than I liked Kieran's. It wasn't that Kieran's parts were bad, it's just that I thought they were aimed more at a male audience, and there was a lot of technical things about the ship, and just general boyish behaviour that bored me. I was much more interested in what was going on with the characters and their relationships, than with all the things going on with the ship. I would have been quite happy not knowing, but I guess it's good that they are there, so that the book can be enjoyed by everyone.

Anyway, I thought Waverly was a very good female lead, and I found it easy to relate to her in some ways. I understood how she was feeling when she began to question some of the things that were expected of her, and I really liked how she objected to some of the things that may have happened because she's still young. Sometimes in books, I feel that characters have grown up too fast and the author has made them seem much too old for their age, but there was none of this problem in Glow. I think the author got it just right. Kieran as a character was also really well thought out, and they were well fleshed out and were not boring and two dimensional. The characters were definitely the best part of the book for me.

The plot got a little slow in places throughout the book, but overall, it kept me interested enough to keep me reading. There were a lot of twists and turns that I didn't see coming, as well as some that I did. There was a good mixture of surprise and tension, and when I got the chance to read for longer than ten minutes, I flew through the pages.

Overall I really enjoyed reading Glow, and I'm really looking forward to the second one. It's a quick, interesting read with great characters and a plot that I've never seen before. I'd really recommend it to fans of YA dystopian, and I think it'd be a great place to start if you've never read anything dystopian!

*I'd like to say a huge thanks to Macmillan for sending me a copy of this in exchange for an honest review. In no way has this affected my opinion of the book.
My Rating:

I give it 4 Feet!

Challenges:
2011 Debut Author Challenge #27
2011 100+ Reading Challenge #87