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A review by mikekaz
Shine Your Light On Me by Lee Thompson
3.0
This is one of those times where I wish the 5 stars ratings had a bit more granular scoring. I'm giving the book 3.5 stars but rounding it down instead. While the book wasn't bad, it was not up to the usual quality that I expect when I rate a book with 4 stars.
While I normally do my best to avoid all spoilers, there might be some small ones included here. The story jumps immediately to Aiden LeDoux and his friends hanging out at his father's bar. The bar loses power and while the power is coming back online, Aiden unexpectedly emits a light of his own. A light that heals everyone in the same room of any ailment that they have. The rest of the story then deals with what happened and how people (those in the bar and the town) react to it.
In my mind, it's a good idea and one that has potential. One of my problems though was that the readers were thrust into the story too fast. I was still figuring out who was who when I then had to switch to their reactions to what happened. And there was a lot of character depth that shown but not explained. During the light emitting, the story casually mentions Aiden's father's crucifixion. Wait a second, literal or figurative? That's a more than casual line drop event. And it turns out to be literal! Then another character is introduced as a stepmother, "a wildly beautiful woman that so many men in the area craved", but her relationship status is confusing because she's at the bar with her stepson and not her husband. Personally I think those problems could have been easily solved by providing the readers with more story and character development from before the "light shining event". Another 50 pages would have explained a lot of the history and characters and avoided that initial confusion. That would have also helped to care about the characters more. So much was happening and characters were reacting but I didn't really care about what happened or who got hurt. I wasn't emotionally invested in anyone because I didn't really know anyone. I couldn't sympathize. If the book had been a novel instead of a novella, that would have helped. And my final big complaint was the missing police. Through the entire story, the police didn't show up for any of the deaths, crucifixion, fights, mobs, or home destruction. They do show up at the very end to take reports and clean up the dead bodies but that's it. With everything that happened, I can't believe that no one called the police until way after everything is finished. I don't mean to be that harsh because I enjoyed the premise of the story. And while the town citizens' actions might be extreme, they do make some sense. As I said at the start of the review, I have mixed feelings: good premise, key plot points that are interesting, not quite enough to make me care. I have another three books by Thompson on my To-Be-Read pile; hopefully one or more are novel length and I like them more so than this one.
While I normally do my best to avoid all spoilers, there might be some small ones included here. The story jumps immediately to Aiden LeDoux and his friends hanging out at his father's bar. The bar loses power and while the power is coming back online, Aiden unexpectedly emits a light of his own. A light that heals everyone in the same room of any ailment that they have. The rest of the story then deals with what happened and how people (those in the bar and the town) react to it.
In my mind, it's a good idea and one that has potential. One of my problems though was that the readers were thrust into the story too fast. I was still figuring out who was who when I then had to switch to their reactions to what happened. And there was a lot of character depth that shown but not explained. During the light emitting, the story casually mentions Aiden's father's crucifixion. Wait a second, literal or figurative? That's a more than casual line drop event. And it turns out to be literal! Then another character is introduced as a stepmother, "a wildly beautiful woman that so many men in the area craved", but her relationship status is confusing because she's at the bar with her stepson and not her husband. Personally I think those problems could have been easily solved by providing the readers with more story and character development from before the "light shining event". Another 50 pages would have explained a lot of the history and characters and avoided that initial confusion. That would have also helped to care about the characters more. So much was happening and characters were reacting but I didn't really care about what happened or who got hurt. I wasn't emotionally invested in anyone because I didn't really know anyone. I couldn't sympathize. If the book had been a novel instead of a novella, that would have helped. And my final big complaint was the missing police. Through the entire story, the police didn't show up for any of the deaths, crucifixion, fights, mobs, or home destruction. They do show up at the very end to take reports and clean up the dead bodies but that's it. With everything that happened, I can't believe that no one called the police until way after everything is finished. I don't mean to be that harsh because I enjoyed the premise of the story. And while the town citizens' actions might be extreme, they do make some sense. As I said at the start of the review, I have mixed feelings: good premise, key plot points that are interesting, not quite enough to make me care. I have another three books by Thompson on my To-Be-Read pile; hopefully one or more are novel length and I like them more so than this one.