A review by sidneyellwood
The Brilliant Light of Amber Sunrise by Matthew Crow

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.