Thank you Simon & Schuster Audio for the ALC and Avid Reader Press #partner, for the advanced copy of We Are the Light in exchange for my honest review.
Publisher: Avid Reader Press / Simon & Schuster ALC
Published: November 1, 2022
Summary:
From Matthew Quick, the New York Times best-selling author of The Silver Linings Playbook, made into the Academy Award-winning movie starring Jennifer Lawrence and Bradley Cooper, comes a poignant and hopeful novel about a widower who takes in a grieving teenager and inspires a magical revival in their small town.
Lucas Goodgame lives in Majestic, Pennsylvania, a quaint suburb that has been torn apart by a recent tragedy. Everyone in Majestic sees Lucas as a hero—everyone, that is, except Lucas himself. Insisting that his deceased wife, Darcy, visits him every night in the form of an angel, Lucas spends his time writing letters to his former Jungian analyst Karl. It is only when Eli, an 18-year-old young man whom the community has ostracized, begins camping out in Lucas’ backyard that an unlikely alliance takes shape and the two embark on a journey to heal their neighbors and, most importantly, themselves.
From Matthew Quick, whose work has been described by the Boston Herald as “like going to your favorite restaurant. You just know it is going to be good”, We Are the Light is an unforgettable novel about the quicksand of grief and the daily miracle of love. The humorous, soul-baring story of Lucas Goodgame offers an antidote to toxic masculinity and celebrates the healing power of art. In this tale that will stay with you long after the final word, Quick reminds us that life is full of guardian angels.
My thoughts:
This is the first book I’ve read by this author but it certainly will not be the last. I got this book sent to me and I really had no idea what it was all about. I put it aside until I started seeing so many rave reviews for it and then my online bookclub picked it as one of our November books. I can’t wait to discuss it in-depth with everyone as I am hesitant to put too many details here for fear of spoiling anything.
This book is not an easy one to read – it deals with the aftermath of a mass shooting but what makes it stand out is the message it delivers. This book is about grief and how we all have a different way of grieving and that there is no one right way to handle our grief. I loved that this was told in epistolary format – it gave the book such an authentic lens for which we as the reader could not only get into Lucas’s head but also see the other cast of characters – a quirky, yet kind bunch of people that were just trying to move on in the best way they saw fit.
The author doesn’t reveal all that happened all at once, but rather drip feeds us pieces throughout the book. I found this to be highly impactful. There was also a good balance of light and dark. I would be laughing in one scene and then the next one would have me tearing up. It seemed to hit just the right emotions at just the right time.
This book is an emotional rollercoaster that is going to hit everyone differently. We all come to books with our own connections and so this one might affect you in a way that it did not affect me, but I so encourage everyone to pick this one up. It really is such an uplifting story, one that I know I will be recommending to everyone I know. I might have shed a few tears while reading but I definitely ended up hugging this book when I was finished and know that this will be staying on my shelf to remind me that grief is a journey that takes however long it takes.
Audio thoughts:
I had the opportunity to listen to this one and am so glad I did – Luke Kirby does a fantastic job bringing this story to life. His narration was spot on, bringing just the right amount of emotion into his voice as needed. I was a little worried that I would have a hard time listening as the book was in letter format, but I need not because between the story itself and the narration, I was drawn in immediately and ended up listening to this in just one day – I could not put it down!
