A review by sidofherran
There Is A Light by Ban Gilmartin

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.