e.l.f. books- hit or miss?

I'm sure that most of you own at least a few e.l.f. products. If you're a mega-cheapie like me, you may own quite a few. To me, e.l.f. is a very hit or miss brand, which is ok since most of the products are only $1-$5, so if the item isn't great, it's not like I'm out a lot of cash. I picked up the Beauty Book Eye Brights Edition for $5 from Target, and The Beauty Encyclopedia Sparkle Eye Edition for $5 from the e.l.f. website. Let me tell you an interesting story about the e.l.f. cs first (you can skip this if you want, it doesn't relate to the product review). I actually ordered the Sparkle Eye set a couple weeks ago when there was that 60% coupon for the e.l.f. website, along with a bunch of other stuff. It arrived with most of the shadows totally cracked and spread all over everything. I emailed the company, and they said they would send me a new one. I got a confirmation email saying my package had been sent and everything. Then a couple days later, I got another email saying they were refunding the money because the set was out of stock. Does this make sense to you? Me neither. I never did get the set, so why they said they had shipped it is beyond me. Anyway. I got the Sparkle Eye set in the mail today and was excited to open it up. But something seemed eerily familiar... DUN DUN DUN! *lightning crash* Two different books. Same damn set of eyeshadows! *werewolf howl* The only difference is that the Eye Brights set has a mirror, and the Sparkle Eye set has 2 cream shadows. Thankfully it was only $5, so it's not like I'm out much here. But it was still annoying to finally get the product I was excited about only to discover I already have it! I'm going to give it to a friend who will hopefully like it. Here are the swatches for the palette(s), row by row. The top half is on dry skin, the bottom half is over pixie epoxy. As you can see, the pigments are pure garbage without an adhesive base. I used pixie epoxy instead of a primer because I didn't know how much a primer could even do to fix these. Without the PE, the first three colors are basically nonexistent. The fourth is a beautiful, beautiful taupe. Still terribly pigmented and chalky. I could not get an even coat on the dry skin for anything. I like the nice forest green, and the blue has pretty good shimmer in it (like Barry M's Aqua Gold). That first silvery shade was so stiff and hard (heehee) I felt like I was rubbing the brush on cardboard. Seriously. Even over the PE, it barely shows up. The purple and wine shade are both GORGEOUS. The silver & the black both have glitter you can't see in the picture. This leaves me confused on my opinion of the palette! There are some really nice colors in there, but you absolutely have to use them over a super sticky base to get any color out of them. For only $5, and the few really nice colors it has in it, I wouldn't say I recommend it, but I'm not condemning it either. I will say I probably wouldn't buy any other beauty books after this. e.l.f. has some really stand-out products, but these beauty books certainly aren't contenders for that category. While the PE makes the colors gorgeous, I don't think they should have to have that much help to show up. Could this review be more wishy-washy? I don't think I've ever felt this way about a product before, lol. Do you have these or any other e.l.f. books? What do you think?