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This Little Light

Lori Lansens

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Oct 11, 2020 Melinda Worfolk rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: canadian, women-authors, fiction, young-adult, speculative-fiction, lgbtq-plus, strong-women, 2020-2024

The premise of this book is interesting: in a near-future dystopian United States of America, fundamentalist evangelical Christians and far-right groups are making serious headway in the government, 1) taking away women's reproductive freedom by making birth control difficult to access and criminalizing abortion, and 2) persecuting undocumented immigrants. Ahem. So anyway, our protagonist is a 16 year old daughter of secular Jewish parents who themselves immigrated from Canada to California, and The premise of this book is interesting: in a near-future dystopian United States of America, fundamentalist evangelical Christians and far-right groups are making serious headway in the government, 1) taking away women's reproductive freedom by making birth control difficult to access and criminalizing abortion, and 2) persecuting undocumented immigrants. Ahem. So anyway, our protagonist is a 16 year old daughter of secular Jewish parents who themselves immigrated from Canada to California, and she gets mixed up with a sketchy evangelical abstinence-only Svengali type preacher who organizes a purity ball at her high school. Half the book is the narrator's recollections of how the whole situation came to be, and half of it is her frantic journal of her current situation on the run from the law with her best friend. I found the narrator quite likeable, which is good, because we spend a LOT of time with her. She is fiery and principled in a fairly realistic 16 year old way, which I appreciated. Her thought processes didn't seem like those of a middle aged person transposed onto a teenaged character.

Even though the story is interesting, it is oddly structured and suffers slightly for that. Despite the "on the run" aspect of the narrative, it is quite static for some time, because the fugitives hunker down in one place for a veeeery looooong portion of the novel.

The writing is fine, but every once in a while I was like, if I read one more "__________, because _________" construction I'm going to lose it. For example: "We live in Calabasas, California, which is famous because Kardashians" or "The whole clan lives at the top of the hill now, in this massive compound because safety." Aaaaaaaghhhhhhhh. It just grated terribly after a while.

What redeemed it for me was the ending, which I cannot tell you about because that would ruin it. But suffice it to say I was thinking right up to the end, ehhh, well, I guess it's going to be a satisfying but sort of predictable ending, when suddenly OH WOW SHE WENT THERE. I had to admire the author for committing in a way that I think YA novels sometimes don't. Anyway, she definitely went there, which, props to her. That third star is for the ending.

Overall, my verdict is that it is entertaining and worth a read if you like YA and feminist dystopian literature. Content warnings: (view spoiler). ...more

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