Reviews

There Is A Light by Ban Gilmartin

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trudi's review

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emotional hopeful sad slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

canonicallychaotic's review

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5.0

“today i’ve been the kind of person i want to be. the kind of person i think i can be. like, maybe if i can do things like this—be useful, be good, help others, maybe it’ll help me stop treating everything like it’s temporary.”

jamie gilmour is ready for a new start. so he follows his childhood best friend to edinburgh, hoping to start making better choices and sticking to them. when he gets a job at a bookstore, he crash lands into jude pujari’s life. jude is terrified of change, but everything around him is changing. he’s living, but he’s not sure if he’s really alive. together, they conquer change, second chances, and face who exactly they might want to be.

there is a light is an actually comfort read; it feels like a warm blanket around your shoulders, your hands held up to the fire before they grow too cold.

it’s a slow burn, it’s a forced-proximity, it’s a strangers to lovers with many stops in between. it’s a journey in mental health, a journey in addiction, a journey in grief. it’s finding your place and your people. it’s a book about allowing yourself to be seen, and allowing yourself to be loved for all that is seen. it’s allowing yourself to take all the chances you need. it’s knowing that love can’t fix you, but neither can shutting out love entirely.

i’ve read there is a light maybe three or four times now, and i love it every time. as an independently published book, it’s not one that has a lot of traction. but it’s one i don’t talk about often because of how tightly i hold onto it. but i’m loosening my grip a little now. i’m allowing this part of me to be seen.

and if you take a look—maybe you’ll like what you see.

cw: alcoholism, discussions of suicide and suicide ideation, anxiety & depression, internalized homophobia

sidofherran's review against another edition

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emotional funny hopeful inspiring reflective medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

you choose love. you decide to keep loving people. you decide to keep loving them.
you look at their shitty side and their good side and you decide if you want to take the time to invest in them, if you want to give them a chance to know you, give them a crack at seeing you when you're split open and ugly and let them find the ways they can hurt you.

a touching story about fucking up and making self-destructive choices and just trudging through life barely surviving, and then finally, finally choosing to seek help and begin the rocky road to recovery. about tenth attempts at a second start. about learning to let others in and love and be loved; about fucking up and trying again, and again, and again, and again, and again. about being brave. about not giving up. about facing life head-on even when it's goddamn terrifying. about learning how to live.

i really liked jamie, who has the biggest heart and always wants to fix things, make them better, and makes bad decisions and drinks because he doesn't know how to deal with life and

the pain of being abandoned, growing up never knowing who his real parents were

. he thinks he's fucked up and just a piece of shit and hates himself, but he has so much love just waiting to be given away. the way he

felt he's just deliberately choosing to be fucked up and fuck up his own life bc he thinks he doesn't have a mental illness or "real" trauma to pin his self-loathing and struggles on

, was extremely relatable. the way he felt selfish for wanting someone who didn't know how to let him love them was way too goddamn relatable. i also came to like jude, who

shut down after the death of his mother bc he did not know how to cope with his grief and complicated feelings about her death.

he dissociates through life and pushes away his loved ones who try to help him, and rationalizes it as not wanting to be a burden to them. it was touching that in the end what made him change his view on life and come out of depression was

new life - the birth of a child, his little cousin, son of the aunt who's more like an older sister to him.

speaking of upma, she also grew on me, and julian's dad too, and billie is great of course... oh man

they are all good characters who felt like real people who i spent some time with. i love their found family. the author excels at writing characters who feel like real people, with engrossing dynamics with each other and each character feeling like they have their own family, whether blood family or found family, who support them and they support in return, and have been with them through thick and thin. wish i had something like that. i especially loved billie & jamie's friendship, it was beautiful and touching and i love that their love for each other is platonic, mostly. platonic love and found family just hit different,,,,

the romance that slowly developed btwn jamie and jude felt so natural and like it made perfect sense for these two to love each other and be a couple. there were such sweet and heartwarming scenes btwn them as their feelings for each other peaked.... man.... it was so 😔 in a good way. and then things get too real and the part where

jamie wanted jude so badly and jude wanted him too and yet kept pushing him away and avoiding him was so. it hurt bc it was so familiar. and the things they thought in their heads and said to each other, so much of it felt so familiar bc i've been in similar patterns before and it just... hit hard. but im glad they got to resolve it in the end.

i like that the ending was happy and yet open and left things resolved bc that's life. life always throws shit at you and keeps throwing shit and you and you never know how things will turn out and what would happen next and how things will be resolved bc those goddamn ups and downs keep happening. but you keep going anyway and figure things out as you go bc that's life. and with the people you love at your side, you want to keep going and figuring out things together. feels so much more true to life than a "and they lived happily ever after"

i definitely enjoyed this very much and there were touching and meaningful moments. though i like weak heart more, but probably bc im more into fantasy than contemporary fiction.

adavidson37's review

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dark emotional funny hopeful slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

I love this. I love this book so much. Jamie and Jude are just two sad fucks trying their best, and its way too relatable. This is my favorite character dynamic- when they’re both depressed, so they’re just able to understand each other in a way no one else does. They just ✨get it✨, and it makes being around each other and being open with each other so much easier and simpler. I don’t know if I’ve ever loved characters like I’ve loved Jude & Jamie. I see myself in both of them (shout out to Jamie & his pisces, smiley face tattoo having ass, bc same). These two are relatable as hell, and messy, and so sweet on each other, but also so meaningful individually as well. I could write essays about them, both separate and together. This book is the slowest of burns, but it doesnt even matter bc it’s still satisfying in the end, and the journey to get there is relatable and holds your attention and is worth it. Long live Frog & Toad.

ida's review against another edition

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emotional funny hopeful reflective sad

Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

Jamie Gilmour is trying for a fresh start. Again. But he keeps making bad choices. Jude Pujari doesn't want to die, but living isn't exactly that exciting either. Set in Edinburgh, mostly in and around a book store and the queer community, this is a story of facing your past trauma, of reaching out and holding on, and fighting for yourself and want you want.

This is a slow, slow burn - I liked getting to know Jamie and Jude but it doesn't really kick off until about halfway through and that's just a little too late for my taste. But the final half of this book is just so good. It has everything: funny moments and expressions, heartfelt reflections and at the heart two people you just desperately want to get together.

It's realistic but hopeful and will leave you feeling just a bit soppy for these characters.