In the first Kayla Bashe book I read, the concept was great but the writing was very shaky. I think her technical skill has improved considerably since then! I enjoyed this queer superhero adventure wholeheartedly. Shadow, a famous young superhero with power over darkness, is devastated when they find that their adoptive parents have been killed by vicious wildlife on an alien planet. They also learn that their parents had taken in a teenage girl named Bean, who survived the beasts but will need help getting back to Earth. Shadow and Bean bond on their trek through the jungle, and when Shadow disocvers that Bean has the superpower of light manipulation, they help her to enroll in an academy for young superheroes in training.
This book is super fun, full of rainbows and cuteness, but it’s not all happiness all the time. Shadow and Bean both struggle with mental illness, and learning to manage their anxieties and trauma and accept the love they deserve is every bit as important as defeating supervillains, and considerably more difficult. ( )

I could write so much about To Stand In The Light and how amazing it is, but for right now all I will say is this: on a bad day the best cure for feeling better is to climb inside a Kayla Bashe story and stay there for as long as possible. Reading her fiction gives you a sense of how wonderful the world (and people) can be...and, for a time, everything _is_ better. Maybe that's why I like to linger so long among her words. ( )