Reviews

We Are the Light, by Matthew Quick

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randywgravitz's review

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dark emotional hopeful inspiring reflective sad tense slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.25

emviolet's review

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challenging dark emotional hopeful reflective sad slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.0

This is difficult to give a star rating. In terms of quality of writing, I thought it was good. There was a lot of symbolism and research into Jungian psychology. It was well written. It was overall approachable in tone.

But in terms of the story itself…I just wasn’t entirely invested. There was a certain distance between the reader and the story. Maybe that was purposeful. I had trouble feeling connected with the characters and their pain even though it was a very sad book. I think I’d probably give it a 4 for quality of writing but more like a 2.5 for my attachment to the story, so maybe a 3 overall is good.

Content Warnings

joannabooks23's review

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3.0

Epistolary novels are hit or miss with me. This one was done differently and was so very sad. Once I started it I couldn’t stop thinking about it. Lots of emotional triggers (mass shootings and ptsd) that could effect most people.
I love this author and was also sad to read his notes on why he wrote this one.

krissy0906's review

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emotional hopeful inspiring reflective sad slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.5

gentlemanjeff's review

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3.0

Matthew Quick committed fully to the epistolary style with this novel, but the maudlin, one-sided prose it produces requires variation to be illuminating, and there's very little of it in this book.

We Are the Light is significantly less optimistic than some of Quick's previous works like Silver Linings, the Reason You're Alive and the positively incandescent Love May Fail, while describing depths of hopelessness and despair that may have gone unexplored in those novels. It's a relief that the author has returned to writing, but fans of his transcendent character studies based around protagonists who suffer from psychological trauma may be less buoyed by the experience in this one. Certainly, the conceit is no less ambitious (a town dealing with the aftermath of a mass shooting struggles to accept the benign existence of the shooter's sibling) but it may have been too much to wrap up as perfectly as we've come to expect from the narrowly-averted-calamities described in the author's previous works.

Primarily, fans will be glad to see that Mr. Quick is once again writing books--our metaphorical guiding beacons--so we can forgive the lighthouse keeper if his lens needs a little dusting off before it's restored to its full brilliance.

Thank you to Avid Reader Press and NetGalley for the ARC.