Reviews

The Brilliant Light of Amber Sunrise by Matthew Crow

a_payne's review against another edition

2.0

I liked the ending...but it was all very meh. Didn’t make me emotional like I thought I was and the main character became annoying halfway through.

nagam's review against another edition

I think this was the wrong time to read this one. I just finished watching The Fault in Our Stars movie again and it's so fresh. I got to 35% here and honestly, I'm just not into it. For a kid with leukemia living in the hospital, I know nothing at all of his treatment. Only who is around him and I'm starting to see his budding relationship with Amber. I would have preferred to see a lot more of his life and experience going through treatment than seeing snippets of conversations, floating through the days, not really knowing where his health is.

owls_rainbow's review against another edition

3.0

I liked this book but there was too much regular home stuff and Francis laying in bed and not enough about the actual illness. We never got to get to know the other patients or the nurses and despite being told Chris is gay on the first page apart from a passing mention of pretty boys in record stores he seems to remain celibate for the whole book which I find rather unbelievable considering he's probably 30+ by the end. Also the parents relationships seemed rather rushed and we aren't given any closure regarding the boys' dad.

bebbiie's review against another edition

4.0

Loved this book, only took me this morning at work to read and I'm seriously considering re-reading it this afternoon as well!

sidneyellwood's review against another edition

1.0

Have I ever hated a main character so much? This kid had his head so far up his own ass he was talking out of his asshole but the sound came out his mouth. Look - I'm all for smart kids. What I can't take is the 'better than thou' attitude that Francis had throughout the whole book. He called himself a sophisticate, an intellectual, which is annoying, but then Matthew Crow would give him an "impressive array of literature" and make him like Romantic poets and then go ahead and put down Kelly and Paul, making them caricatures of teenagers. He didn't even have any redeeming qualities either. He whined a lot. Like, actually whining.

And Amber - typical Manic Pixie Dream Girl.

Spoiler

She dies at the end to change Francis's life. It's typical and annoying and unsurprising.

Bad trope. She's a Cool Girl who Changes The Boy's Life and Gets Him Into Trouble and shit like that.

This book was trying too hard to be The Fault in Our Stars, too, but at the same time ... cancer really wasn't a huge part of the book? There was no explanation of treatment. It was very badly written. Oh, and it was romanticising a terminal illness as well. Yeah. Not good all around.

acal92's review against another edition

emotional hopeful sad fast-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

4.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Cancer

megan_wynne's review against another edition

1.0

I'm not one to usually leave reviews but I felt very passionately about my one star for this book. First of all, the inside cover summary basically alludes to what happens to Amber at the end so the whole book you kind of know what's going to happen to her.. So no element of surprise at all. Also this book is about how Francis gets cancer- specifically Leukemia- and falls in love with Amber who is also sick. But the biggest thing that bothered me was how little the author did to actually write about the more specifics of dealing with and being treated for Leukemia. I've had Leukemia twice now and it just makes me mad how little the author researched it... Like how are you going to make your book based on the sickness and then not even write about the realities of it?? A book that is similar is Zac and Mia by A. J. Betts and this author did an amazing job of writing about the realities of dealing with cancer as a teenager. Matthew Crow only brushed the surface on a story that he could have and should have dug deeper into. Also Francis and Amber's relationship was completely unrealistic. I felt like one second they met and the next they're dating and in love? There was just so much that went wrong in this book and truthfully I have no idea how it even got published.

crabber's review against another edition

2.0

1.5/5
Very disappointing, it was very awkwardly paced and the story itself wasn’t anything special. The ending wasn’t bad but that doesn’t matter when the rest of the novel is.

sanmeow's review against another edition

medium-paced

• Loveable characters? No

this was surprisingly boring to me. even for a the fault in our stars retelling. the romance between amber and francis was the most unrealistic thing ever and i couldn't feel connected to them whatsoever. francis is an alright character on his own, but he's way worse with amber, considering i very much disliked her personality and attitude. the writing style was okay but didn't really stand out to me in any way. the pacing was confusing. i was just extremely bored and skimmed quite a lot. 

mckenziestaley23's review against another edition

3.0

At first I wasn't really sure how I was going to like this book... about half way through it when I started to really like it. I'm not sure if I loved it yet, but I really really liked it.
More of a review coming when my computer is fixed.