This Raging Light

Hi bookworms!

Today on my blog I have a review of This Raging Light to share with you all. As soon as the book was delivered to my doorstep, I devoured all 312 pages in one sitting and completely fell in love with it, so much so that it has now become one of my all time favourite contemporary reads.


Official synopsis:

Can the best thing happen at the worst time?

Her dad went crazy. Her mom left town. She has bills to pay and a little sister to look after. Now is not the time for level-headed seventeen-year-old Lucille to fall in love. But love - messy, inconvenient love - is what she's about to experience when she falls for Digby Jones, her best friend's brother.

Favourite quote:

'I didn't understand yet that everything always changes. It's a law of the universe.'

Favourite character:

My favourite character in the book definitely had to be Eden, Digby's twin and Lucille's best friend. Why did I like her? Because her friendship with Lucille wasn't always compatible. Albeit being portrayed as stubborn and fiercely loyal, she wasn't always perfect: she argued, fell out with the people she cared about, and said and did the wrong things. But the fact that she made mistakes - and owned up to them - was one of the many reasons why I loved her.

3 words to describe the book:

Raw, heart-wrenching, eye-opening.

Rating:

✮✮✮✮/✮✮✮✮✮

One thing that particularly struck me about this book was the writing - or precisely, how skilled Estelle Laure was at using her writing to evoke emotion from me as a reader. The prose made me laugh in all the right places; as the nuance between Digby and Lucille shifted, for example,  it was very easy for me to feel their awkwardness as they began to realise that what they felt for one another was no longer strictly platonic. The foundations of this book were built upon Digby's and Lucille's relationship and, admittedly, I feared that the plot would be plain because of it. But I couldn't have been more wrong. Estelle Laure explored their feelings for one another in a way that set the book up to be an extremely moving read; their love was clumsy and awkward and, given the fact that more often than not, love within YA Lit. is presented as too perfect to be relatable, this was particularly refreshing to read.

In the midst of all the light heartedness, This Raging Light had its share of emotional moments too. Issues such as poverty, abandonment and personal struggle were handled with  such tenderness that it really did make the book stand out; just like in the real world, the characters were confronted with stressors, and seeing how they battled with those issues and confronted them was very interesting.

For me, this book was a beautiful, bittersweet rollercoaster and it has made me very excited to read Estelle Laure's future publications, such as These Mighty Forces which is set to hit the shelves in 2017. If you love Young Adult Contemporary fiction, I cannot recommend This Raging Light enough!

1 comment

  1. I'll second that . . . For me Estelle's debut was her extraordinary knack at passionately memorizing every nursery rhyme and song at age 4 in her London nursery school. She had a perfect British accent. Estelle Laure's proud mother!

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