Reviews with content warning for Suicidal thoughts - The Light of the Midnight Stars

I quite liked moments in it, and I quite liked what the author was trying to do, I only felt that she tried to do a bit too much. The fairytale nature made the characters feel a bit stilted, just people experiencing many horrible things in life. The ending was a bit rushed. And one of the sisters plotline…would have at least been better if they’d been aged up. All that said, it’s a thrilling concept with a unique feel to it, and the mythology involved is quite fascinating.

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mirichasha's review

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dark mysterious reflective sad tense medium-paced

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

3.0

Thank you to NetGalley and Redhook Books for the ARC!

Queer Rep: bisexual woman POV character, lesbian love interest

Major Trigger Warnings: sexual violence, sexism/misogyny, violent antisemitism, sexual content involving minors/with adults, grief, death generally, and more specific very visceral acts of violence/execution that are spoilers

I really wanted to love this book, and there are parts I did love! The grounded, complex and messy portrayal of Jewish identity and belief and history and mythology in this book was excellent. I love that the author brought these lesser known (at least outside of specific communities) Jewish folktales to life. Each sister felt like a unique character with very different approaches to the world around them, and they all, especially Sarah, changed in interesting ways over the course of the book. I am so glad to see a f/f relationship in a Jewish fairytale book. I was engrossed the whole time – I stayed up until 5am reading this book at one point. I wanted to like it, and spent my whole experience reading it feeling very conflicted. I didn’t hate this book, but I don’t think I can say I liked it either. The word that feels most fitting is “conflicted.”

I struggled with how young the sisters were at many points (specifically around marriage and sex). I know this is likely what was happening at the time, but I would have had a much more positive experience with this book if they were all aged up even two years. The characters’ lives also seemed to revolve almost entirely around marriage and sex – desperately wanting to have sex, therefore desperately wanting to get married immediately, despite being, for example, thirteen years old. This seemed to be what their whole selves revolved around. Not a single character had a completely platonic friendship outside of their family. The characters didn’t seem to have wider lives outside of their tragic fairytale romances, which makes sense when trying to fit so many fairytales into the lives of a single family.

The romances themselves all started so quick and so strong and desperate that they felt almost unreal, especially as that kept happening over and over and over again. I felt the heavy hand of the author while reading this – that in order to weave all of these different tales together, she had to maneuver the characters into encounters that just felt absolutely unreal, even in a fairytale, to imagine happening to the same person. It’s as if Cinderella also experienced the story of Snow White and Sleeping Beauty and Little Red Riding Hood. At some point, the woods feel too full of princes and you have to wonder how the princess could still fall ever again, why she wouldn’t just sit down right there and refuse to budge. And if, like with this book, we’re using the gritty, original, haunting version of the fairytales, the amount of trauma and pain the character has to go through to live through all of these stories is too much.

I think it’s the author’s choice to weave all these stories into the life of one family of sisters that made this book not work for me. I think I could have loved this book as a short story collection happening to different people, or if the second half of the book happened to the Solomonars’ cousins, for example. Actually, the moment I most thought I would turn out to love the book was when I mistakenly thought that a transformation that happens midway through the book was a permanent and complete one, down to memories, and identities, and origin stories. I think going in that direction could have been so fascinating, and made a big difference for me. I saw the way that the first part of the book was almost a prequel to the rest of it, and I just wish that the sequel had differed more from its predecessor. I kept hoping for an ending to pull enough of the strings of the stories to feel satisfying, to bring meaning to it all, for something to click, and I just kept waiting. I feel like I'm still waiting.

This book seemed to be made for me, as an Ashkenazi queer Jewish person who has a niche interest in queer fairytales. Ultimately, although I was engrossed, I spent just as much time and energy being concerned about the book as a book as I did about the characters and story while reading. Even though this might not have been the book for me, I absolutely want to see more from this author and want to see more Jewish fairytales especially with queer representation.

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