Review: When Light Left Us by Leah Thomas
SYNOPSIS:
When the Vasquez siblings’ father left, it seemed nothing could remedy the absence in their lives . . . until a shimmering figure named Luz appeared in the canyon behind their house.
Luz filled the void. He shot hoops with seventeen-year-old Hank’s hands. He showed fourteen-year-old Ana cinematic beauty behind her eyelids. He spoke kindly to eight-year-old Milo. But then Luz left, too, and he took something from each of them. As a new school year begins, Ana, Hank, and Milo must carry on as if an alien presence never altered them. But how can they ever feel close to other people again when Luz changed everything about how they see the world and themselves?
In an imaginative and heartfelt exploration of human—and non-human—nature, Leah Thomas champions the unyielding bonds between family and true friends.
REVIEW:
*Book Received in Exchange for Honest Opinion/Review*
Okay…truth because it’s my blog and I do what I want, I didn’t like this book. I read it out of sheer determination and it took me the past week to finish. So the story concept, I think is brilliant and unique. An alien appears and inhabits the body of siblings. What a refreshing and unique concept to the Young Adult book market, sign me up. The execution was a confusing mess, that left me lost in the story line, floundering between the multiple POVs, and over all annoyed that it was so poorly done.
I almost DNF-ed the book within the first chapter because the opening to this story is so confusing. I don’t really understand the opening, it is a flashback, told from no one’s point of view, and it definitely don’t hook the reader. Next, let me tell you about my confusion with the chapter titles as it took me about 10 chapters to figure out Hank, Milo, and Ana were actually POV chapters associated with the body parts Luz inhabited. And wow was that frustrating and confusing. So after about page 75, I think surely this is looking up. Alas, I was wrong.
The author then felt the need to insert relationships into the story. Why yes, an alien named Luz taking over bodies isn’t enough to handle a plot on its own, lets have Ana and Hank dating people. But wait, it doesn’t stop their we are going to have exploring sexuality, multiple exes appearing and friends deciding to come out to you. NO, just no…where were people to tell this author that this is too much. The story had no balance or symmetry, it was bouncing from plot line to plot line, from melt down to melt down, and it wasn’t enjoyable because during all of the this, the main story was washed away.
Overall, it was just too much crammed into a book to make it a cohesive novel. It didn’t flow and while I wanted to be left with good feels, I ultimately was just happy it was over. So excellent idea, horrid execution.
LINKS:
Goodreads | Amazon | Barnes and Noble
