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Book Synopsis:
A story of World War II about the unlikeliest of pen pals—a Japanese American boy and a French Jewish girl—as they fight to maintain hope in a time of war.
In 1935, 10-year-old Alex Maki from Bainbridge Island, Washington, is disgusted when he’s forced to become pen pals with Charlie Levy of Paris, France—a girl. He thought she was a boy. In spite of Alex’s reluctance, their letters continue to fly across the Atlantic—and along with them the shared hopes and dreams of friendship. Until the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and the growing Nazi persecution of Jews force them to confront the darkest aspects of human nature.
From the desolation of an internment camp at Manzanar to the horrors of Auschwitz and the devastation of European battlefields, the only thing they can hold onto are the memories of their letters. But nothing can dispel the light between them.
My Review:
“Maybe, Alex, maybe loving a city, a country, is like loving a person: you love her despite her faults, you forgive her constantly, you always believe in her, fight for her, you never give up on her.”
4/5 stars. I loved This Light Between Us. It kept me engaged, I was attached to the characters, and I felt so many emotions. I also loved the overall themes. However, the writing style prevented it from being a 5-star book. That might sound nitpicky, but the writing had many weird, clunky aspects that were very noticeable and took me out of the narrative.
I was drawn to This Light Between Us at first because of the letter format. I love epistolary books and I think they can be a very interesting storytelling method if done well. While the beginning was consistently like that, and there were a few sections later on that were only letters, I was disappointed at first that it wasn’t the entire book. However, I didn’t mind as I got into it because the plot was very engaging and I don’t think it would have been as good if it was only told through letters.
Speaking of the plot, I’ll talk more about that. I was very invested the entire time. The author wrote everything in a way that held my attention and made me want to keep reading to find out what would happen next. It also helped that I was attached to the characters. I was rooting for them and felt for them, so I wanted to find out if they would be okay.
Now I’ll share my complaints. One small one is that I wish we got more of Charlie’s perspective instead of only hearing about her life through her letters. But my biggest issue was the writing style: a few things stood out in a negative way. There were some weird moments where it switched into future tense or into second-person POV. Maybe it was supposed to be for poetic effect, but it didn’t work for me and was very jarring. Another big thing is that the writing was full of way too many sentence fragments. Don’t get me wrong: I love a good sentence fragment when they’re used very intentionally, but the ones in this book didn’t feel intentional. It was pretty distracting at times.
Rated: Moderate. There are infrequent uses of mild and moderate language, God’s name taken in vain, and racial slurs. There are some references/mentions of sexual content, but nothing shown. There are a lot of descriptions of the harsh conditions of camps and war, death, blood, wounds, etc. Teen/young adult soldiers get drunk and smoke cigarettes at times.
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