Brightly Burning by Alexa Donne Review
Hello Lovelies! Hope everyone is staying well during quarantine. I’ve been distracting myself by reading a ton, and I hope that this review will give you something else to focus on for a little while.
Today’s book is Brightly Burning by Alexa Donne. Brightly Burning is a Young Adult Sci-Fi novel. It was pitched as a Jane Eyre retelling in space and LET ME JUST SAY it delivered! I really really enjoyed it, I gave it four stars on goodreads. I’m relatively new to science fiction, and I think that this was a really good introduction. The science fiction elements were easy to comprehend and the story was fast paced, especially considering the classic it is based on.
Representation is really thriving in Young Adult and I am here for it! That is something this book does really well. Many of the side characters are people of color and members of the LGBTQ+ community. While the representation didn’t play a huge part in the overall plot, it was still really nice to see a cast that was not all white/straight.
Another really enjoyable part of this book were the relationships. There were several relationships that were really well done. Alexa Donne is really good at writing banter, and I feel like that really made the romance shine. The main character, Stella’s, friendships were all very complicated and unique and I enjoyed that immensely. I liked that Stella had romantic connections with multiple people throughout the story, even though there was only one primary romance arc, I thought it was realistic and well done.
Now let’s get to the cons...
This was a debut novel, so I’m sure the author has grown since this book was published. Overall, the execution was good, but there are still things that I didn’t like about this book. All of these things are completely subjective, and you might totally dig them. I am in no way trying to disrespect the author, I really enjoy her YouTube channel and I plan to pick up her other books!
Bianca was the tropey rich mean girl of the story, most young adult stories play on this trope a lot and personally I think it’s really tired. Throughout the story, Bianca and Stella vie for the love interest, Hugo’s, attention. Bianca is catty and rude and does a lot of not so great things to Stella basically because she’s a spoiled rich girl who has never been told no (we’ll leave it at that for spoiler’s sake). So, I felt pretty lukewarm about Bianca. Mainly she just pissed me off. But then, in the third act Alexa Donne almost did one of my favorite things ever to dear Ms. Bianca. And then she backed down. You see, she almost gave Bianca a redemption arc, and therefore, a bigger role in the climax of the book. We saw Bianca and Stella share a connection and plan to work together to save the fleet. I was so hyped. Sooo hyped. She gave Bianca a deeper psychology, and I was so there for it. And then, she didn’t go anywhere with it. Bianca’s arc was solely there for a plot convenience, and therefore felt incomplete. We never got any closure with that character and that was really disappointing. Overall, I would have really liked to see Bianca play a larger role in the story and have a more fleshed out arc. Instead, she had a really rushed redemption and then was forgotten about, all for the purpose of the main character’s success. :/
Okay, so one of my favorite things to read about are emotional arcs and those heart wrenching, gut punchy moments. I’m always looking for the heart of the story, and I don’t think I’m alone in this. This doesn’t feel like a unique thing, but it’s always one of my priorities when reading. The first part of the book was JAM PACKED with emotional turmoil, conflict, and romantic moments, all of the things I love. And then, once again Alexa Donne just kind of... stopped? Like, once the plot really started to unravel and we began to build to the climax, the emotions felt stunted. All of those moments of betrayal, heartache, and grief were just brushed over with blocks of narrative text. This is probably my biggest issue with the book. I felt like it really took away from the pay off of the plot and put up a wall between me and the story and characters. The moments just weren’t gut punchy because they were glossed over. Not great.
I don’t know if it’s just me, but I feel like this is a major flaw in young adult literature. AND PLEASE DON’T MISUNDERSTAND, I love love love young adult literature! (I’m actually planning on dedicating an entire blog post to it). But, anyways I found myself really being able to predict the entire plot as it unraveled. I would be reading and then I’d think *hmmm I bet this is going to happen next* and 9 times out of 10 I was right. So, I don’t know if this is necessarily a flaw, but I found it kind of annoying because she didn’t take any risks. This also made me not really feel any anticipation because she made several choices that reassured me that everyone would be okay in the end. In science fiction and fantasy I feel like the midpoints and climaxes are usually bigger than what this book provided. I’m sure that this is totally subjective, but I really would have liked to see her take more risks and make the plot more twisty.
And that’s all folks. Thank you for reading this review. If this book sounds interesting to you I definitely recommend picking it up, especially if you’re new to science fiction and enjoy common young adult tropes. My finals are almost over and I’m hoping that I’ll be able to post more after school is out! Stay healthy, stay safe, stay happy.
