Title: The Light That Gets Lost
Author: Natasha Carthew
Genre: YA, Contemporary, Fiction
First published: November 5th 2015
Publisher: Bloomsbury Children
Finished reading: February 16th 2017
Pages: 320
“His life had been set upon by circumstances beyond his control. He wasn’t ad for the kick of things; he’d grown bad like bacteria on foul meat.”
As part of the Beat The Backlist challenge I’ve joined this year, I’ve been browsing my kindle a lot lately. I stumbled upon The Light That Gets Lost just as I was looking for my next read, and I was intrigued by the the title and the cover. Confession: I didn’t check what the book was exactly about nor did I realize it had a very low goodreads rating, or I might have doubted my rash decision. Because I ended up being just as lost as the light in the title. Basically it’s a miracle I even made it to the end, because I had a REALLY hard time reading this story. First of all, I had a really strong dislike for the writing style. The dialogue overflows with ‘slang’ and bad grammar and instead of creating a ‘youthful’ vibe the only thing I felt was extremely annoyed. It’s also quite confusing what’s really going on with the main character, what on earth he is doing at the camp and how such camp even exists in the first place. Is The Light That Gets Lost actually set in an dystopian world? Is Trey just messed up or has he really a demon inside him? If I have to be honest, in the end I think I just really don’t care… Because instead of losing me halfway through, I think The Light That Gets Lost has never had me in the first place.
When Trey is only a little boy, he witnesses something no child should ever see. Because as he is hidden in a cupboard, he hears his mother and father being killed brutally at home. And even though he is small, he makes a promise to himself he will get revenge one day. Years later, he might be able to come closer to that goal. Trey enters a strange camp meant for troubled teenagers. He has been in and out of trouble ever since he witnessed the murders, but he isn’t at the camp to be saved. Instead, he is sure he will find the man who killed his parents at the camp. Will he be able to do just so?
The title and cover draw you right in and the blurb still sounds pretty good, but I can’t say I actually enjoyed reading this novel. The Light That Gets Lost has a writing style that either works for you, or will curl your toes as the ‘slang’ and bad grammar dialogues pile up. The story doesn’t really make a lot of sense and I’m still not exactly sure if this is supposed to be dystopian or just a really messed up ‘realistic’ fiction story… I’m sure the right person will probably enjoy this a lot better, but The Light That Gets Lost definitely wasn’t my cup of tea.
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