Review: The Light We Lost (by Jill Santopolo)

My Rating:  3.5 stars


Let me start off by saying that I have never been a fan of contemporary romance novels.  Nothing against the genre per se, it’s just that I prefer stories with more depth to them and unfortunately, a lot of the books I’ve read that fall into this specific category are typically lacking in this area.  While I would consider The Light We Lost as one of the better-written contemporary romance books I’ve read, it still didn’t quite hit the mark for me, especially from an emotional perspective.  In reading the reviews, I know a lot of people loved this book and found it to be a heartbreakingly romantic and moving love story, which I guess it was to some extent depending on how you look at it, but to be honest, I didn’t really feel it.  

The story started off well and in the beginning, I truly was moved by the special bond and love that the central couple Lucy and Gabe shared, but as the story progressed, I found myself becoming increasingly frustrated with the direction things were going, especially with the main character Lucy.  It was hard for me to understand Lucy’s thought process at times and some of the actions she took as well as reactions she had to things that happened actually frustrated me to no end.  While I didn’t really like Lucy all that much, I do appreciate the author’s attempts to make her character realistic in that, like all human beings, Lucy is not perfect – she makes mistakes (big ones as well as minor) and bad choices that of course have devastating consequences and have the potential to ruin the good life that she had worked so hard to build.  In this regard, even though I disagreed with a lot of Lucy’s actions, there were some parts where I was truly able to empathize with her.

One of the things that I found disappointing with this book was the lack of character development outside of Lucy.  She was pretty much the only character in the book who was fully developed – everyone else was essentially one-dimensional.  I’m assuming this has to do with the way the story was structured in that the entire narrative was told from the first person point-of-view, with Lucy “talking”’ to Gabe and essentially recounting her perspective of their story from the day the two of them first met.  This “spin” on the first-person narrative is indeed unique, but I also felt it kind of backfired in that I was basically able to guess the ending early on, barely a few chapters into the story.  Perhaps this is one of the reasons why I was not able to relate to the story as much on an emotional level.   

The summary hints at similarities to Me Before You in terms of romantic, “tug at your heartstrings” love story, but to me, both books were at different levels.  Me Before You had way more emotional depth – that book made me laugh but also made me cry, the ending especially.  This one didn’t have the same emotional pull – or perhaps it was just lost on me. 

Overall, I would say that this was a good book, just not my type of book.  It’s definitely well-written and as far as contemporary romances go, this one deserves to be near the top of the list in that genre.  Some of the dialogue was meaningful and the message about the consequences of choice definitely rings loud and clear. 

Received advance reader’s copy from G.P. Putnam via Penguin First To Read program.

Read in April 2017