From the minute this book was announced, I knew I had to get my hands on it. Eli has a perfectly normal life in a perfectly normal town in the States. The only odd thing about Eli is her absent mother, who disappeared without a trace in Eli's hometown in Norway. But Eli knows the truth: she was there when her mother was taken by the Northern Lights and never seen again.

Gorgeously written, this beautiful book is not one to miss. I loved the effortless magic wound through the narrative. Eli's own framing style fit the novel perfectly, and her stories were a lovely addition. Just a beautiful story from start to finish, with complex descriptions of grief and loss, whimsical storytelling, and lovely explorations of family.

According to Arctic legend, if you whistle at the Northern Lights, they'll swoop down and carry you off forever. Eli believes this is what happened to her mother. Years later, Eli discovers the Northern Lights are visible on Cape Cod where her and her father are currently living. She uses the light to contact her missing mother and it works. She quickly disappears leaving Eli with more questions, so Eli decides to go to the Svalbard to find her. This was a beautifully written story about the emotional relationship between a girl and her missing mother. I love the cover.

AHHH THIS BOOK!!!

Okay so I'll admit: when I first started this book, I felt like I was going to DNF it. I just couldn't really get into the story and the main character, while I could clearly understand her grief of losing her mother, wasn't really for me. But what kept me going was the writing... and yay that I did!!

I liked this, like really liked this. The first and foremost thing to speak on is the writing: I loved it. While sometimes I didn't really care for the dialogue between the characters, the way the scenes and surroundings were described painted a picture in my mind (I KNOW). I need to go visit the Northern Lights once in my life!! But the way she wrote grief and loss, sometimes I just wanted to give Eline a hug lol.

And also what really stood out to me was the folklore. I love Norse mythology (mythology in general) and I love that writers are starting to intertwine stories with folklore. It really makes me fall in love with the story more.

I think the only reason why I'm giving this 3.5/4 stars is because like I said- the characters fell a bit flat for me sadly. But this book did make me realize how much I enjoy reading magical realism so yay!

Thank you Penguin Teen for sending me a copy (obligated to say of course this an unbiased review).

You sometimes come across a book that completely takes you by surprise. It kind of just reaches into you and grasps your soul with a chilling hold that is hard to simply shrug off. It consumes your thoughts, has you awake at 1 AM bawling your eyes out and thinking about the people you’ve lost.

I don’t even remember what I was expecting going into The Wide Starlight but I feel such utter heartbreak after finishing this beautiful story. My heart aches for Eline, for all that she’s lost and went through.

Nicole’s beautiful lyrical, metaphorical prose and the way Eli’s journey is told in a fairytale sense made the story all the more endearing. I think many of us who’ve lost someone the way Eli lost her mother struggle to find stories that can show how painful it really is. Dealing with loss and grief consumes you in a way that makes it hard to face reality and it was portrayed so prominently accurate here that I am affected beyond words can even explain.

Such an emotional, vivid tale of grief, loss, and heartache. My heart hurts. My soul hurts. And I need more readers to experience this story.

When Eline Davis was six years old, her mother brought her out to a glacier in Norway in the middle of the night. Eline was found, but her mother was never seen again. Now, ten years later, Eline lives in Cape Cod with her dad. One night, the Northern Lights appeared in Cape Cod. Eline went to the beach to see the lights and make a wish to see her mother again. Her mother appears to her, but there are also other strange appearances. A group of narwhals appear in a cove, and some mysterious princesses bring Eline strange messages. Eline knows the only way to fix this is to return to Norway and finally find her mother.

This story was a strange blend of magical realism. There were beautiful stories that Eline and her mother had written between the chapters. These stories were based on the real things that happened to them but they had fantasy elements which made me think they weren’t real. These fantasy elements were also part of the theme of mental illness. Hidden between the lines of Eline’s memories were the moments when her mother was suffering and couldn’t take care of her daughter. These were devastating stories to read about, but it shows how mental illness can affect the family of those suffering.

Though this story was about a sixteen year old girl, it had a middle grade tone. At the beginning I thought that Eline was around twelve or thirteen, but then I realized she was actually sixteen because her and her friends could drive. This story read more like a middle grade story than a young adult story.

This was a heartbreaking story.

Thank you Penguin for providing a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

Beautifully written and full of dreamlike magic, this tale was absolutely surprising to me and it still hasn’t released me from it’s grips! Messages delivered on the wind, once upon a time stories, and the sacrificial love of family abound in this heartfelt read.

Eli doesn’t quite remember what happened all those years ago when her mother mysteriously vanished under the Northern Lights on an icy fjord in Norway, but the memories she does have, however fantastic, just won’t let her go. Years later, now living in Cape Cod with her father, the Northern Lights return and Eli can’t help but whistle up to them with hopes they will bring her mother back to her and the unexpected begins.

Rich with vivid imagery, this beautiful blend of fantasy and folklore took me by surprise and left me in awe!

Overall an interesting novel dealing with mother/ daughter relationships. It had an element of storytelling that I thought was very interesting and it kept me intrigued. I enjoyed the plot and the characters, I just wish there was a little bit more to it.

Thanks so much to PenguinTeen for the copy and Happy Pub Day!

The Wide Starlight is stunning. When Eline was a child, her mother disappeared in Norway and Eli was left at the scene. Ten years later, Eli is 17 and her search for her mother has never ended. Magic begins to happen and Eli must return to Norway to solve it all.

The folklore of this book is perfect for winter. The descriptions and images Lespearance creates are gorgeous and realistic. You really feel yourself in the story. I especially love the complex relationships in the book and the theme of letting go and moving forward. Definitely a great winter read.

Quick Stats
Overall: 5 stars (I rounded up because it deserves it)
Characters: 5/5 stars
Plot: 5/5 stars
Setting: 5/5 stars
Writing:4/5 stars
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The Wide Starlight is a story containing Norwegian mythology/folklore. It follows Eli as she returns to the secluded Norwegian flord at the top of the world where she lived as a child as she searches for the truth about what happened the night her mother disappeared. Written from Eli’s point of view with multi-generational stories written like twisted bedtime stories sprinkled in, I was captivated by the world and story.

This is an incredible, strong debut by Nicole Lesperance and I can’t wait to read what she comes out with next.

The characters were all well rounded. Eli had a unique voice, and I never felt disconnected from her. I adored Iris’s character and their friendship. I do with we had gotten to see a little bit more of the forming of a relationship between Eli and Kaja, but what was there was well done.
It took me a few chapters to get drawn into the plot and writing, but once I did, I didn’t want to set down the book until I was finished. The magic was woven into every page beautifully. The story was supplemented with fairytale-esque stories that give the reader insight into Eli’s past in Svalvard and her mother’s past and experiences with Eli, magic, and her own mother. I loved this addition. It gave a whole new magical feel to the story and tied in with the plot very well.
When Eli arrived in Svalvard and began exploring I was swept up in the beautiful descriptions of the town at the top of the world. Everything about this novel is beautiful, magical, and atmospheric. I highly recommend this book, especially if you’re a fan of magical realism or contemporary fantasy.

Trigger warning: missing / deceased mother.
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10 years ago, Eli’s mother vanished under the Northern Lights in Norway, leaving her daughter alone on a glacier in the middle of the night. Now, 16 year old Eli and her dad are living in Cape Cod, when their normal life is disrupted by a series of strange events— the strangest being a visit from Eli’s mother. But her mother doesn’t appear well, and she disappears as suddenly as she had appeared. To find her mother once again, Eli has to unravel the truth of what happened that night. She has to go to the last place she truly saw her: the glacier where she was abandoned.
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This book was magical and so, so tragic. My heart broke for Eli, her parents and her grandmother. It’s a heavy fairytale filled with love and loss— It was emotional and captivating every step of the way. Beautiful and lyrical writing, a wonderful atmosphere, a gripping story... you want to pick this one up!
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This book gave me what I wanted from THE HAZEL WOOD by Melissa Albert.
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4.5/5 stars, THE WIDE STARLIGHT by Nicole Lesperance is available February 16, 2021!
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Thank you to Penguin Teen and Netgalley for sending me an eARC to review.

What a beautiful story. It truly captures the essence of loss, and healing. With a magical world so enchantingly written. I can almost visualize the surrounding, the colors, the creatures. More importantly the journey we take alongside the main character Eline (Eli) in search of her mother, a journey where she seeks answers, understanding, and in the end hoping to find closure in a way.

The Wide Starlight is heavy on the magical realism, and as the reader you find that the line between fantasy and reality is very thin, but enjoy the story so much nonetheless.

A novel that will keep me thinking about it for days to come, as I know I put my own feelings and thoughts of my loved ones. It really puts things into perspective. I feel so grateful to have had the opportunity to read this novel before it’s release day! And I absolutely cannot wait for my preorder to arrive, order yours today! Link below!

Thank you to NetGalley and PenguinTeen for an eARC in exchange for an honest review.

I am definitely in the minority when I say this book just wasn't for me. I loved what the author was trying to do with mixing fiction and folklore together. I just felt like it was clunky and I didn't feel for the main character.

I loved how vivid the writing was and I did truly enjoy the "once upon a time" stories that we get that are about Eline, her mother, and her mothers-mother. I just felt like the author put a lot of thought into writing those and then didn't fully invest in the main story.

I thought Eline was very self centered and I know she has grief and trauma because of what happened years ago when her mother disappears. I just feel as though that doesn't give you a right to be a bad friend and she doesn't give thought to her actions.

I wish I could say I loved this, but it just was not for me.

This story was beautiful. I absolutely loved it. I was immediately hooked and couldn't put it down. I loved the introduction of "once upon a time", it made me feel even more excited to keep reading. I loved how all the emotions and feelings that the book has and the characters go through were done. I almost felt like I was there myself and could feel everything Eli was feeling. This book was so unique in the way it made me feel and experience the story. I would absolutely recommend this book to a friend or family member, and cannot wait to get a physical copy upon release!

I’ll fully admit that the mention of the Northern Lights (a natural phenomenon I’ve always found fascinating) was the reason that I wanted to read The Wide Starlight. Luckily, this YA debut ended up being a pretty good read! The novel centers around Eline Davis who, as a child growing up in Svalbard, saw her mother whistle for the Northern Lights and get swept away like Artic legend said. Years later, Eli sees a chance to reach out to her mother when the Northern Lights make an appearance over her current hometown of Cape Cod for a night. But the consequences of being reunited with her mother are too large and magical to be ignored for long. When her mom disappears again to set things right, all she leaves behind is a note asking Eli to find her again. With dangerous magical things shaking up the foundation of the world she knows, Eli travels back to Svalbard to put this mystery at rest once and for all. This novel is yet another tale where the main character grapples with grief, loss, abandonment, and anger with a fantastical aspect woven in, and it worked well overall. I liked that this felt like reading a modern fairytale with all the whimsy and lore woven in, as well as the incorporation of stories within the story itself. I also appreciated the unique setting (I’ve never read anything set in Svalbard, and it worked out perfectly that I read this when we had a winter storm), the complicated family dynamics, and the slower slice-of-life plot. Sadly, I didn’t connect to Eli or any other character on an emotional level which lessened my enjoyment of this read a touch. But I do think this is a solid YA debut, and I’m glad I read it!

I’m struggling to rate this. While I did like it, it was also extremely sad and not something I was ready for. When I saw this book compared to The Astonishing Color of After, I was immediately drawn to it. That book is one of my favorite and I absolutely loved the magical realism of it, despite having such heavy elements to it. And yet for The Wide Starlight… I’m just not sure. Yes, it is sad overall, and it didn’t end in a way that I thought it would. There are some happy moments, but due to the magical realism, it felt a little silly for me to just say, “These people need to go to therapy.” But at the same time… They do. They need someone to talk to, someone who can help them sort and work through their thoughts and feelings.

I also felt… disconnected from the characters. We follow Eline, who lost her mother, Silje, at a young age when her family lived in Svalbard. She and her father eventually moved to New England. It felt like grasping at straws for me, trying to take hold of something concrete in Eline’s life. Yes, she has school and her best friend, Iris; her dad who really is someone good in her life. Yet at the same time I felt distant, like Eline wasn’t wholly there herself, almost to the point of being obsessed with finding her mother. It’s like there was a crack in the universe and Eline needed to fix it, needed to know the remedy. But when she does find out, it isn’t what she wanted or maybe even hoped for it to me.

However, I did like how Eline discovered more about her family. I definitely think she needed that connection to Svalbard and to her mother. She holds a lot of resentment for being taken away from there, which fuels her desire to find her mother even more. Here, she also rediscovers how horrible her grandmother is. The intertwining of the magic and this strange desire for Eline’s grandmother to keep her daughter and granddaughter safe feels like borderline gaslighting. I won’t delve deep into that because *spoilers* but I felt extremely uncomfortable reading all the scenes with the grandmother. There seemed to be a small reconciliation between Eline and her grandmother, though, and that was nice.

It was interesting to follow Eline but then to also follow her mother without the story flat-out saying it’s Silje. I wanted to know more about Silje and her friend, Marit. I would have been interested to learn more about Eline’s father. You can tell he cares for his daughter a great deal and maybe even finds the events surrounding his wife’s disappearance makes Eline quite fragile, so he doesn’t really talk about it. It’s also difficult because he’s a scientist, so straight away Eline knows she can’t really tell him–or anyone for that matter–what happened.

I’m not sure what to make of the story about the three princesses and the lindworm. Overall, that just seems like one wild and crazy story that kept taking very sinister turns.

If you reviewed The Wide Starlight and would like for me to link your review in this post, please let me know!

The cover and the whimsical description of the Northern Lights and finding a lost mother immediately drew me to this book, The Wide Starlight. And sure enough, the beautiful descriptions of Norway match the beautiful cover. However, I didn't feel as connected to the story. It boils down to me not loving magical realism. I just can't seem to wrap my brain around it, which regrettably seems to be the point of magical realism. Anyways. I couldn't connect with Eli because I questioned some of her choices and thought processes, and the fairy tale stuff didn't seem to fit in with the world and aesthetic of the book sometimes. I enjoyed the flashback portions because those seemed solidly in place with the story. But everything else just didn't fit. Still engaging though, with beautiful scenery and some interesting characters.

Writing Aesthetic/Style: 4
Plot/Movement: 3
Character Development: 3
Overall: 3

Thank you, NetGalley and Razorbill, for the review copy!

The Wide Starlight captured me immediately and completely. It is a beautifully written, deeply emotional story about a young girl named Eline (Eli) and her relationship with her mother. Ten years ago, when they still lived in Svalbard, Eli and her mother left their home in the middle of the night. She was found later by a rescue crew on a fjord, while her mother had disappeared without a trace. Now, she and her father live in Cape Cod and she is still plagued by that grief and feelings of abandonment. When the Northern Lights appear over Cape Cod, Eli follows the pull to call them down and ask for her mother back.

The main storyline is interspersed with stories that all begin “once upon a time,” and following that fairytale convention, describe fantastical situations, both happy and sad. They give us more context into Eli’s understanding of the world, of her relationships, and what was lost when they left Norway. There is a fabulist element that permeates this book, which is one of my favorite things when done right. I hesitate to discern too much between “reality” and “fantasy” because that feels inauthentic to Eli’s story, but I can see some readers finding this confusing or wanting to diagnose our main character. I recommend simply going with what is laid out, rather than trying to fight for logic.

The atmosphere especially worked well for me here. I read this at the perfect time, in the middle of winter, and that enhanced the cold, isolated feelings I was getting from the book. The end, too, was perfectly inevitable and cathartic. It is heartfelt and tender, soothing to old wounds.

I feel like I’ve both rambled and said nothing concrete, but that feels somehow fitting for the way this book left me. It is one of those hard to come by stories that cuts close to the bone, those stories that make me forget where my life ends and the character’s begins.

I’ll leave you with some comp titles in hopes that I can more accurately pinpoint who I think will love The Wide Starlight as much as I do. The marketing already calls out The Astonishing Color of After by Emily XR Pan, and I would also add Sia Martinez and the Moonlit Beginning of Everything by Raquel Vasquez Gilliland, both of which follow young girls whose stories revolve around searching for their mothers. I’d also say there’s a similar melancholic tone here to We Are Okay by Nina Lacour, and the casual acceptance/understanding of traditional stories and lore of The Bear and the Nightingale by Katherine Arden.

Content warnings for grief and loss of a parent.

thank you to penguinteen and netgallery for the arc!

absolutely gorgeous and heartbreaking. i felt fully immersed in the story the whole time and felt myself struggling to put it down. a super quick read that feels so much longer and deeper (in a good way) because of all the beautiful stories packed inside

This was an amazing book! The cover is so beautiful, I can’t wait to get a physical copy! The writing is so well done and beautiful! I absolutely loved the writing style! It was different from what I’m used to but in a great way! I love the overall sense of magic and wonder throughout the story. I loved the way the characters were developed slowly and intricately. I love all the relationships and hardships throughout the story. There’s just so much to this book that really makes it’s great. I would love to read more from this author, as I feel like I really connect with her work and writing style!

A beautifully written story about closure. If you're looking for something filled with magic and emotions this is the one for you! While I tend to read books that are filled with lots of action and romance, this book has a kind of quiet of the calm in the eye of a storm. It tackles issues with mental health portrayed in a magical perspective, climate change, and handling a variety of relationships.

While this isn't the kind of book I would usually read, I still appreciate it for what it is. Death and grieving can be such a hard thing and this story is able to really grasp all those complicated feelings and illustrate them in such a beautiful way.