If you are not familiar with Shippen’s work, pull up a chair. She created and wrote the popular audio drama The Bright Sessions, which had four seasons from 2015 to 2018. The podcast was carried on in The AM Archives, which she executive produced, and soon The College Tapes following Caleb and Adam. She co-produced the award-winning Passenger List and wrote the audio adaptation of the popular comic MARVELS. In 2019, she released her first YA novel, The Infinite Noise, and has a third book on the horizon, which will focus on a dream walker named Rose. Shippen is certainly busy! His abilities operate on an unconscious level. People around him are compelled to behave as he wants them too. This includes responding to his verbal requests, but speech is not required. BUT tengo algo triste que decir: este libro es un plomo. No me convence que no haya capítulos porque la historia se vuelve eterna y es una lástima porque la escritura mejoró un montón de TIN a AND, pero la estructura la tiró para atrás. I voluntarily read and reviewed an advanced copy of this book I was kindly given by the publisher in exchange for an honest review. All thoughts and opinions are my own.] There's also found family trope in this book and the theme of this book relies heavily on that. The loneliness, the longing to be accepted by somebody, the joy of having people who can understand you, who can love you and whom you can call as home... Those really strikes me right in the gut. Lauren Shippen is really good at making us feeling what the characters feel. So much emotions, especially when the book ends.. I feel raw and really sad reading this. I always love a book that invokes so much emotions in me. I had read the first book and kinda see how Damien would ends, so I already know the happiness in this book will not last. But the ending still hit me with devastating feelings....

And then, after a beat—simultaneously in slow motion and instantaneously—she stops smiling. It’s like the corners of her mouth are being pulled down by invisible strings. The frown has reached her eyes now and she’s stopped talking. She’s just staring at me with large, frightened eyes. Even though it's a second book, storywise A Neon Darkness is prequel from The Infinite Noise. The Infinite Noise is the first book of Bright Sessions series. While the first book is light and cheery and full of love, this book is more emotional, dark and depressing. This book tells about Robert Gorham, or Damien, a boy with a superpower to make people get what he wants. Even so, his life is not easy and all his life he can't seem to get what he actually really want: to be loved as what he is. Those things change when he meet people with superpower similar to him. But will it ever last? Her images of fireworks displays from cities worldwide celebrate the night as a canvas for explosions of joy.When a tall figure, immune to their powers, discovers them, the first family that Robert has ever wanted is at risk of being destroyed. The only way to keep them Damien is not a hero. He is not righteous, what he did most of times are questionable. What he did some other time are exactly wrong. Some people might even think he is villain. But he has reasons to the way that he is. And reading this I can sympathize with him, with his past and with his decisions. He's so lonely and sad, his power is complicated and he's struggling to control it. I am still mad at other characters because their fear of him hinders them trying to understand him and its unfair to him I just wish he would find happiness someday :') A Neon Darkness is a villain origin story that gives you an intensive look into the main character's motives and desires. You discover th A Neon Darkness remains a novel that while it frustrated me, was intriguing on some level. We always want to be the hero of our own story. But what happens if we aren’t? We all know the saying, “with great power comes great responsibility”, but who enforces that? For me, my intrigue with the A Neon Darkness came with the exploration of this question. And the associated wonder if someone can put in the hard work to change. (Though it features Robert, who is a white cis seemingly straight able bodied man with the power of persuasion, which is kind of like a series of my worst nightmares and a symbol of the world). But?

ID?” the guy asks when I reach the gate. He squints at me through the smoke and I smile at him, the motion of my mouth curving feeling foreign and fake like always.

Naming him Damien, they welcome him in their lives and world, while trying to discover what happened to their friend Blaze, pyrokinetic, who is missing. But while he's happy not to be alone, able to be understood and to have a family, Damien is struggling to keep his power under control. And he's not ready to do this sacrifice.