Book Review: The Light We Lost by Jill Santopolo

Title: The Light We Lost
Author: Jill Santopolo
Release Date: May 9, 2018
Pages: 328
Format: Paperback
Publisher: G.P. Putnam's Sons
Age Group: Adult
Genre: Contemporary Romance

          

He was the first person to inspire her, to move her, to truly understand her. Was he meant to be the last? Lucy is faced with a life-altering choice. But before she can make her decision, she must start her story—their story—at the very beginning. Lucy and Gabe meet as seniors at Columbia University on a day that changes both of their lives forever. Together, they decide they want their lives to mean something, to matter. When they meet again a year later, it seems fated—perhaps they’ll find life’s meaning in each other. But then Gabe becomes a photojournalist assigned to the Middle East and Lucy pursues a career in New York. What follows is a thirteen-year journey of dreams, desires, jealousies, betrayals, and, ultimately, of love. Was it fate that brought them together? Is it choice that has kept them away? Their journey takes Lucy and Gabe continents apart, but never out of each other’s hearts.

 

Here's an older title I've been meaning to pick and am glad I finally did. This was another contemporary I've read in the last couple of weeks which brings up the events of Septemeber 11, 2001 (the first was the upcoming book by Tracey Garvis Graves, The Girl He Used to Know). If you're my age or at least old enough to have experienced that horrible event, it took me back to that day and I remembered again how the atrocities committed against thousands of people changed the way I looked at the world forever. This book captures that conflicting feeling of wallowing in tragedy but also wanting to appreciate life in all its glory, even amongst the gloom. I'm sure it was different for everyone, but I know that whatever you felt or experienced that day, it's not wrong or right. It just is.

And I couldn't even imagine having it experienced it from Manhattan, like the two characters at the beginning of this book do. The story begins with Lucy and Gabe, and immediately they feel this instant connection but for reasons I don't want to spoil, they are torn apart. 

It isn't until two years later that they reconnect, and there becomes the love story of their lifetime. This book is told in two different parts. Not that they're sectioned as so, but the story is about Lucy and Gabe and the intense feelings that come from experiencing your first love. The second is the story of Lucy after Gabe - and the fourteen years that transpire in between.

Also, I thought the writing style would turn me off because the entire story is told as if Lucy were writing a story to Gabe, chronicling the times spent together and those spent apart. But it didn't bother me and I think, it actually made for a smoother reading experience because I finished the book in less than twenty-four hours. This book is intense, it made me nostalgic for my former self and what happened during the years of my own first love and subsequent heartache, and I just felt things so intensely and I appreciate and love this book for those reasons. I hope you will too!

As always, happy reading.