Thank you to Netgalley and the publishers for giving me free access to the digital advanced copy of this book.

Thank you to the publisher and NetGalkey for the e-ARC of this book.

I wanted to like this book so much more than I did. It never grabbed my attention, and felt slow to me. I hope I’m in the minority, as I had higher hopes.

In Jodi Lynn Anderson's Each Night Was Illuminated, Cassie, the central character, comes to terms with her lost religious faith, and struggles with insomnia and anxiety sparked by her mother's abandonment and by Cassie's having witnessed an horrific train crash. Enter Elias, a boy who pursues ghosts (and Cassie), challenging her perceptions and waking her up to love and possibility.. This is a thoughtful YA novel, though I think the foolish local priest is jarringly one-dimensional given the author's capacity for developing nuanced characters and plot.

For me this was simply the case of a very written book that just wasn’t my thing.

Anderson has a wonderful way of writing, and I really did enjoy the character development throughout. But unfortunately, it personally did not resonate with me.

I am sure this would be very well received for those who are questioning life’s tragedies while also trying to make sense of their feelings around faith.

I was never able to engage with this book about a girl in New Jersey who becomes acquainted with a boy from Australia who is visiting relatives. While hanging out together, they witness a horrific accident. He returns to New Jersey several years later and most of the book takes place during that summer. The New Jersey town is quirky and there is a thread throughout the book about a Catholic saint. This isn't a romance, a ghost story, or a mystery so I'm not quite sure what hook I could use to get a teen to read this book. But if you know teen readers who like quirky kids from interesting towns, this book might work for them.

Each Night Was Illuminated was absolutely magical! Anderson wrote a story that was so well written I found myself flying through the pages, unable to put the book down, pondering what would happen next. My favorite piece of this entire story was how believable the characters were.

The writing is clear and clean, and very immersive. The book hums along at a good clip, but the pacing makes sure we're given time to breathe between plot-intensifying moments. The story was absolutely engaging and the work that went into the settings was noticeable and superb. I felt absolutely transported and I'm so incredibly glad I was able to read an arc of this story.

Having been raised Catholic, I found a lot to relate to with this book's main character, Cassie. Cassie struggles with her belief, especially when her community's priest, Father James, seems to be using his platform and the church to speak out against people he doesn't like, regardless of what the Bible says.

Jodi Lynn Anderson has this magical way of writing about seemingly unrelated themes and plot lines in a way that come together so beautifully. If there are two things I love, it's anxious teenagers ghost hunting, and I love that this book always went somewhere different than I was expecting. At the same time, the second part of this book felt more disjointed and strangely paced than the first part, and I didn't find the ending to be as strong as the beginning.

But I felt for these characters and Jodi Lynn Anderson's language was as beautiful as ever. I will continue to read everything she ever writes.

Thank you to NetGalley for sending me an ARC in exchange for an honest review!

A young Catholic girl who wants to become a nun and a boy who doesn't know what he believes experience an event together one night that makes them each question their beliefs.

I enjoyed and identified with the perspective of someone being brought up in a faith, but also seeing the hypocracy of the people tied up within it. It was also bittersweet and gave me melancholy feelings to hear someone have tremendous doubts concerning their faith.

The story reminded me kind of like Bridge to Terebithia or the writing of John Green.

Content includes:
Young love, crisis of faith, prejudice from a faith community, some cussing and a half dressed make-out scene. No full on nudity or sex.

Thank you to Harper Collins Children's Books for sending me the eARC for free via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

This book was maybe the most inexplicably good thing that I've read in awhile. Cassie, at 12, considers herself a loch ness monster of a girl and is a devout Catholic, but when she and Elias, a visitor to her town for the summer, witness a tragic event, she loses faith and Elias leaves town. Years later, Elias returns and the events of this book are set into motion.

The faith journeys of young people are so incredibly complex and I love watching Anderson (whom I have long admired as an author) tackle that in Cassie from her job at a convent despite her lack of belief in the religion she was raised in and borderline obsession with a saint to experiences with the problematic priest in her parish. Religion is still something that I feel like YA often stays away from and seeing that tackled in so relatable and nuanced a way was incredible.

Elias and Cassie's relationship is fickle and fast and feels so real, reminding me of some of my own friendships at that age. While Cassie and Elias are largely the only two fully fleshed out characters in a way that feels fitting with the first-person POV, Cassie's siblings and a nun also experience some characterization that helps along the story and adds dimension to the side characters.

I think the thing I loved the most about this book is that while it's largely about religion and faith and the relationship that grows between Cassie and Elias, this book is also about ghosts and the climate crisis. It both felt so heavy and difficult to contend with, but like something I wanted to devour (and indeed I read it in a day). How does a book balance such things, I can't quite say, but I can wholeheartedly recommend this book to fans of contemporary YA fiction, people who want to see their own complex journeys with faith and religion reflected in a text, and people just looking for a plain incredible reading experience. I'm going to be thinking about this book for a long time to come.

Each Night Was Illuminated
by Jodi Lynn Anderson
Pub Date 20 Sep 2022
HarperCollins Children's Books, Quill Tree Books
Children's Fiction | Religion & Spirituality | Teens & YA


I am reviewing a copy of Each Night Was Illuminated through HarperCollins Children’s Books, Quill Tree Books and Netgalley:




Cassie stopped believing in much of anything, despite growing up in a devout Catholic family. The day the train fell in the lake. Then she set her mind to forgetting the strange boy named Elias who was with her when it happened.




After Elias comes back to town after many years away, Cassie finds herself being talked into sneaking out at night to follow him ghost hunting though she knows better than to believe they will find any spirits.



The more time Cassie spends with Elias with his questions, his rebelliousness, his imagination that is so much bigger than the box she has made for herself—the more Cassie thinks that even in a world that seems broken beyond repair, there just may be something worth believing in.



I give Each Night Was Illuminated Five out of five stars!



Happy Reading!

This story starts off with a bang and Anderson's writing style is engaging and smart. I would recommend for Y/A or adults who enjoy good writing and stories that question what you know. I appreciate stories with spiritual and/or religious subtexts, which this has as well. Thanks to NetGalley for this ARC!