E.L.F. Beauty Book "Bright Eye Edition"

I first saw these E.L.F. Beauty Books probably about a year and a half ago but I never bought one just because I wasn't sure about them, even though they had gotten good reviews.  So when I was at Target the other day, I checked out their selection.  By the way these are only $5, which for 12 eyeshadows, you can't really beat.  They had the "Bright Eye Edition" and the "Smoky" one.  I was more drawn to the colors in the smokey eye one, but I decided to get the Bright Eye one because of the dark blue/purple color because I thought it might be a good dupe for my Kat Von D "Redemption" which is one of my favorite eyeshadows.

So here is what the palette looks like:

And the inside:

I have to say that I looked in every "Bright Eye Edition" book they had and every single one of them had some broken shadows, this was just the least broken.

And now some swatches (NYX JEP "Milk" as a base):

taken inside with flash

taken outside, no flash

Most of these colors have a nice, silky feel but the medium purple and the dark browns feel chalky and dry.

Three of the colors in this palette reminded me of other colors that I own.
ELF palette vs. Kat Von D "Redemption"

The elf shadow is a bit more blue and not as bright as "Redemption"
top picture is in natural light

ELF palette vs. Urban Decay "Twice Baked"

If the two elf shadows had a baby, they would be Twice Baked
the left picture was taken in natural light

ELF palette vs. NYX "Mermaid Green"

Mermaid Green in a lot lighter and more yellow than the elf shadow
the left picture was taken in natural light

And then I wanted to do a look using this palette exclusively so I could get an idea as to how the colors translated on my eyes.  I used the whole bottom row of the palette over TFSI.

Overall, this palette is just eh.  I really wanted to like it a lot but I'm not thrilled.  Would I buy it again?  No.  The colors aren't terrible but they're not fabulous either.  They blend well but when I see a bright color in the palette, I want to see a bright color on my eye (I do like the greeny/gold highlight color, though).  I'm going to give the rest of the colors a shot another day just to be fair but I don't foresee myself reaching for this very often.