Friday, October 21, 2016

Book Review: What Light by Jay Asher

What Light
By Jay Asher
Release Date: October 18, 2016
Source: ALA
Sierra's family runs a Christmas tree farm in Oregon—it's a bucolic setting for a girl to grow up in, except that every year, they pack up and move to California to set up their Christmas tree lot for the season. So Sierra lives two lives: her life in Oregon and her life at Christmas. And leaving one always means missing the other. 

Until this particular Christmas, when Sierra meets Caleb, and one life eclipses the other.

By reputation, Caleb is not your perfect guy: years ago, he made an enormous mistake and has been paying for it ever since. But Sierra sees beyond Caleb's past and becomes determined to help him find forgiveness and, maybe, redemption. As disapproval, misconceptions, and suspicions swirl around them, Caleb and Sierra discover the one thing that transcends all else: true love.

What Light is a love story that's moving and life-affirming and completely unforgettable.

Christmas is my absolute favorite time of year and I am already ecstatic that it is only two months away. When I saw that Jay Asher's newest book was about a girl whose family works on a Christmas tree farm, I definitely knew I had to read it! 

Sierra has always lived two lives: her life in Oregon and her life in California during the Christmas season. Sierra loves her family's business, especially since her mom and dad met on the tree lot when her dad worked there when he was younger. Sierra loves both of her lives equally, but this year during her time in California working at the tree lot she meets Caleb, a boy with a bad reputation but a good heart and even better smile. Sierra finds herself spending more time with Caleb and becoming attached to him while she has to come to terms with a family secret that may affect her future in California and, ultimately, with Caleb. 

This book had so much potential, but a common problem I find with YA books is how juvenile the main characters can act. I didn't really connect with Sierra as much as I wanted to because her decisions regarding Caleb were very juvenile and not really thought out. I think that his secret that everyone was judging him for was not what I was expecting and I still don't really understand fully why he would do it and why Sierra would think it was totally okay for him to do that. I wish that the secret was something less…weird and disturbing? I don't know, that just didn't sit well for me. 

I guess this book did really embody how much someone can become wrapped up in another person. Sierra really fell head over heels for Caleb and started to ignore everything and everyone she loved so much in her two lives. The one character who continued to try to sabotage her, though, was annoying and his motives seemed a bit exaggerated. This book wasn't bad at all, I guess I just wasn't wowed by the story or as into the romance as I would like to be in a YA contemporary. 

Overall, this was just an average book that had a very unique and magical concept. I didn't really connect with this romance and the story didn't blow me away like I expected.

1 comment:

  1. Sorry you weren't as thrilled with this book as you hoped you'd be based on the concept. :-(

    Nicole @ Feed Your Fiction Addiction

    ReplyDelete

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