A sequel to "Count the Ways" (really recommend reading them in order.
Beautifully written, story of a family, the lives of each member and the events - tragic and wonderful that make a life.

Part history lesson, part how family interactions and lack of them form the basis of a life.

"There is a crack, a crack in everything. That's how the light gets in. -- Leonard Cohen, Anthem" I loved Joyce Maynard's Count The Ways and this sequel continuing Eleanor's story is very good, but not as excellent as Count The Ways. The beginning was a bit slow and hard to get into, but then it got much more compelling. There are many cracks in Eleanor's life that we learned about in Count The Ways - her marriage ended after her 5 year-old son Toby suffered a traumatic brain injury when he almost drowned when his father was supposed to be watching him, her husband Cam was having an affair with their babysitter Coco and later married her and had a son with her, her daughter Alison never felt like she belonged in a female body and underwent the transition to become male, and her daughter Ursula resents her for the divorce. Eleanor is now 54 years old and experiencing great success in her career. She had moved back to the family's New Hampshire farm to care for cancer-stricken Cam (he and Coco are divorced now) and to take over the caregiving responsibilities for Toby. Cam has just passed away. There is a lot of family drama that plays out in this book set against the background of what is happening in America between 2010 and 2024 - the 2016 election and all of its political aftermath, climate change, and many others. Eleanor learns a lot about herself and really grows as a person as she deals with all of her family's issues and many of her own. Thanks to #netgalley and #williammorrow for this ARC in exchange for an honest review.

4+ stars

This is the follow-up to “Count The Ways” written a few yrs ago that was a ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ read for me.
This book follows Eleanor and her family from the yrs
2010-2024.
This book covers a lot of different topics and issues that happen in her personal relationships and also things going on in the world.
The writing took me back and I easily remembered the events from the first book… I would highly recommend you read “Count The Ways” before this one!

I love this author…have read several of her books!

Thank you to NetGalley and William Morrow Books for the ARC!

Available June 25th

Joyce Maynard has another brilliant book on her hands with this gripping follow up to Count the Ways. This book can easily be read as a stand-alone, but I highly recommend reading that book first as it was wonderful as well.

After the death of her ex-husband, Cam, Eleanor has moved back to the farm in New Hampshire where her children were raised. With it come memories of all the events that touched and affected their lives. Toby, Eleanor's adult son who suffered a brain injury as a small child, lives with her.

This book follows a 15-year time span and follows the family and each family member’s journey. Eleanor is the focus of this book with Toby coming in a close second. Joyce Maynard depicts how trauma has affected this family. She also shows the family's resiliency, their hope, their insecurities, their issues, their pain, their love, and their triumphs.


I found How the Light Gets In to be a captivating, enjoyable and emotion evoking read. I love Joyce Maynard's writing and her look at families. I appreciate the insight into human behavior and relationships that Joyce Maynard brought not only to this book but to all her books. Families and relationships can be messy, and Joyce Maynard depicted this brilliantly in this book.

Every character in this family was so distinct and unique, which was nice in keeping everyone clear and having a distinct voice. Plus, each had their own journey individually and as member of a family in this book. Toby and his sheep stole the show for me. I simply adored his character.

This book does touch on covid, political events and politics in America, and her characters thoughts on them in this book. While those things happened during this book and it makes sense that the characters would experience and have thoughts on them, it began to feel like repetitive.

This book was beautifully written, compelling, evokes emotion, and full of characters that at times had me wanting to give them a hug. Joyce Maynard is a gifted writer and her talent shines through.

This book does touch on many difficult subjects and Joyce Maynard handled them with care.

Thank you to William Morrow and NetGalley for an advance readers copy of this book.

This big novel reads like a fairy tale of fractured relationships and people, dealing with a variety of contemporary personal, social, and political issues.

Covering over 20 years in one woman’s life, from middle age to her 70’s, we see challenges and changes through the eyes of Eleanor, mother of three, living in rural New Hampshire, and, it slowly becomes clear, a very successful author and illustrator of children’s books. This gives her resources and connections she might not otherwise have had, and affects some key points of the plot.

The novel begins with a heart-pounding prologue of a young family’s rush to the emergency room when their youngest child is found face down in a pond. It then picks up 25 years later, with the death of Eleanor’s former husband, and follows her as she tries to understand and nurture her three children and their loved ones. The primary plot revolves around the brain-damaged child, Toby, as he grows into a gentle, sweet, if somewhat simple, man, with rare emotional perception and understanding. However, his older siblings also struggle with their issues: Al transitions from female to male, marries, and longs for children. Ursula is implacably angry with her mother, whom she blames for their family’s break up, not wanting to know the real reason: her father’s wish to be with someone else.

Bringing other characters into Eleanor’s orbit, many issues are covered, from climate change to infertility, from parental neglect to school shootings, homelessness, addiction, cancer and bone marrow transplant, Long Covid, gay marriage, and the elections of 2016, 2020, and the January 6th attack on Congress.

The messiness and vulnerability of life are filtered through Eleanor’s sensitive but strong feelings and efforts to understand and go on from multiple losses, and to cherish the love she does find.

Though complicated, ultimately, this is a thoughtful and wise book, as Eleanor learns to live with anger and loss, acknowledging the importance of luck as well as choice, and weighs her own decisions between moving on and making peace with where one is.

How The Light Gets In is the sequel to Maynard’s prior novel, Count The Ways. This is a wonderful continuation of a story that was quite memorable and I was very happy to receive an Advanced Reader’s Copy.
For me, this book brought closure and it also added insight into Eleanor’s story as well as providing additional points of view from some of the other main characters, like her children and husband.
This book spans over a fifty year period and I was totally absorbed in Eleanor’s journey. I would recommend that Count The Ways be read first in order to truly appreciate this great story about a family tragedy, family personalities, relationships, and the passage of time

How the Light Gets In by Joyce Maynard is a recommended literary domestic drama and a sequel to her 2021 novel Count the Ways. This character driven novel returns to the story of Eleanor and her family through fifteen years (2010 to 2024). Fifty-four-year-old Eleanor has moved from Brookline back to the New Hampshire family farm to care for their brain-injured son, Toby, now an adult. This continuation of the original story and documents Eleanor's relationship with her family and her struggles with the societal changes around her.

As expected the writing is excellent, the characters are fully realized, and the complex story of a family is presented. I loved Count the Ways and was looking forward to revisiting Eleanor and the music she is listening to as events unfold. Alas, I didn't enjoy How the Light Gets In as much as Count the Ways. There was too much reiterating of past events at the beginning of the novel. This is a plus if you didn't read Count the Ways or if are many years between reading the two novels and you need a reminder of what happened previously. It becomes a negative to spend so much time covering past events for a novel just published in 2021. The second negative was the insertion of every recent divisive political or societal event that has recently occurred. I have cautioned more than one author recently to keep their personal views and editorializing on contemporary social/political topics to themselves and out of books as it diminishes the novel. Thanks to William Morrow for providing me with an advance reader's copy via NetGalley. My review is voluntary and expresses my honest opinion.

The review will be published on Edelweiss, BookBrowse, Barnes & Noble, and Amazon.

I'm sitting here, somewhat quiet and breathless, having just finished "How The Light Gets In". I'm wondering how and when I'll likely be able to start the next book on my ever growing 'TBR' list after this emotional roller coaster of a novel. This is by far not the first time Joyce Maynard has left my heart in pieces, and yet taught me valuable lessons about life, family and understanding ourselves. She's done this through the lives of her characters, many of whom I won't soon forget.
"How The Light Gets In" is actually a follow up to her novel "Count The Ways", which I read a year or so ago. I see that Joyce herself is saying of her new novel, that while you don't NEED to read "Count The Ways" to enjoy it, I honesty can't imagine why you wouldn't want to spend absolutely every moment possible with this family of characters, some whom you'll adore, others not so much. However, the decades that I've spent with them, will forever hold a place in my literary heart and memory. Bravo Joyce!
Thank you William Morrow Publishers and NetGalley for the early reading copy"

This book is a sequel to Count The Ways, published in 2022. It's helpful to have read the first book but not necessary. When events from the past are mentioned, there are always enough details that the reader won't feel lost.

This story covers many years. We watch Eleanor and her family quietly go about their lives, the children are grown with children of their own. It is character-driven, with a lot of narration. We are privy to many of Eleanor's thoughts as she gets reflective of events in her past. As in the first book, the reader has a window into an imperfect family with conflict, love and everything else that accompanies a family dynamic. Reality. In particular, I love Eleanor’s relationship with her differently-abled son, Toby. Toby is such a unique and lovable character.

Many current issues and events are mentioned in the book. In one way, I think it helps the story to be relevant. But sometimes, it gets too detailed, at which point it seems to bog down the flow of the story.

Just as in the first book, I have come away from this book feeling like this is a very real family, one I have gotten to know (and like) well. I know I will miss them when I’m finished.

A few of my personal positives: I loved the cover! No particular reason, I just do. And I appreciate that some of the chapters are very short. Short chapters make books fly by! And, lastly, I love that one of the little girls grows up reading Beverly Cleary books. This is the author that got me on the wonderful road of reading, many years ago.

And, one negative, that doesn't really impact my rating: the book could have been a little shorter. The narrative on climate change (which DID fit into the story) could have been hugely condensed. There were a few other parts that could have been edited to be shorter. But, the part that almost affects my rating (down from 5 stars to 4 stars) is all the talk of Donald Trump. I don't want or need to read about controversial political issues in a novel about a family. But in the end, I couldn’t do it. This truly is a 5 star book.

And, lastly, thank you to Joyce Maynard for adding the epilogue. Much appreciated!

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for the Advance Readers Copy.

How the Light Gets In
This story spans 50 years from the 1970s to 2024. The main character, Eleanor, was orphaned as a child. She started drawing comic strips before she met her husband Cam. He made and sold wooden bowls and earned very little. So Eleanor’s comics and illustrated children’s books supported the family.
They had 3 children and one day tragedy struck. Toby, the youngest child was playing near a lake and nearly drown. After he left the hospital, he had some brain damage and was never a normal child again.
The accident caused a rift in Cam & Eleanor’s marriage since Cam was supposed to be looking after Toby when the accident occurred. The couple eventually divorced and Cam remarried a young babysitter who had worked for the family.
The rest of this story is about all that Eleanor had to endure including Toby’s disability, resentment from a child because of the divorce, a daughter who was transgender and then caring for Cam as he was dying from cancer.
Eleanor was Toby’s caregiver after his father’s death and much of the story is about her concerns for his well being.
The story touches on many events that took place during that time span including the Trump Presidency, the rise of the Make America Great Again movement, the school shootings around the country, climate change, same sex marriages, in vitro fertilizations, stem cell donations, gender reassignment and child sex abuse.
The book was interesting and kept my attention. It may have covered too many contemporary problems while trying to prove the resilience of the main character. The reader may wonder: how could all this happen in one family.
I received this ARC from the publisher and Net Galley in exchange for an honest review.

Joyce Maynard is a recent discovery for me. When I was notified that I got to read “How the Light Gets In” I had to rush and read the book “Count the Ways” first. I was blown away by Count the Ways, and gave it a five star rating. I immediately went into “How the Light Gets In” and that may have been a mistake. Perhaps if more time had lapsed between the two books I would not have been so disappointed in this story.

I was eager to find out how Eleanor had fared, and of course, how the rest of the family members were doing, as well. One of the things I liked about the first book was how Maynard tied in significant episodes in history to the story of Eleanor’s family (Challenger explosion, etc.). This same tactic was used in this newest book, but not only is the book loaded with them, they are far more current. I felt that so much around recent events such as January 6 and the pandemic were jammed in, along with social commentary. For some reason, it felt rushed to market.

We met all the characters but one or two in the first book, but I still really missed getting more depth to them.

There was something about the book that felt rushed; also, repetitive. I realize that with an ARC, we aren’t supposed to comment on the editing needs/errors, but there were so many in this ARC, (One goat changes her name and then changes back, in the span of just a few pages.). I’m thinking this added to the feeling of this book being rushed to market.

Actual rating- round up to 3.5. I still love the characters.

“How The Light Gets In” by Joyce Maynard is a continuation of Eleanor’s story from her novel “Count The Ways” which was a five star for me. A character driven novel that touched my heart with the recognizable challenges life gives us all…and the grace and determination to keep moving forward through all the love, heartache and eventual lessons we face within our lives. This novel covers the second half of Eleanor’s life set against the backdrop of the tumultuous years our nation has faced recently. I will admit to reading much of this novel in tears due to the portrayal of Toby, her special needs son, who, as written, has so much to teach us about love, compassion and goodness. I recommend reading these two novels in order to fully understand Eleanor. I want to thank NetGalley and William Morrow publishing for a chance to reading this wonderful book before its June 25th publication.

’Sometimes when the light hits the broken glass just right, it makes a lovely rainbow.’

This story begins in 2010, a story of family, and the love and losses that come in the years to follow. A story of a traumatic event, estrangement, regrets, divorce, grief, romantic entanglements, and events that will change their lives, even more, as the years pass.

One of Joyce Maynard’s talents is in giving us characters that we can relate to, that really feel real, someone we can envision as a friend, or even just someone who we can relate to. She manages to sprinkle in the things we can relate to, as well, those that bring back our own memories of a time in our lives when we encountered our own tragedies and how we managed to find our way through the grief that followed. Our lives are made of moments, some of these moments are where we find comfort, and some continue to haunt us throughout our lives.

’Here's the thing about the day a baby is born---if you're lucky, and her health is good. For that one moment in time—never again, probably—a parent can still believe that everything is possible. Everything can be perfect. Just as well new parents don't know all the hard things that await them. For this one brief moment anyway, everything remains possible. Eleanor feels this now.’

’Becoming a grandparent means getting a second chance to do it right, Eleanor thinks. Getting to love and to spend time with another child, without the exhaustion and stress of doing it all day, every day. Never a break. With Flora, she thinks, she might finally be able to do what she has not been able to with Lulu and Orson. ’Just be there.’ Get to know her slowly and quietly, a little at a time.’

’Here’s what you did…if you were wise. You held on to these small, good moments, the small good things, and tried not to be greedy for more. They’re like the pieces of expensive broken bowl lined up on the windowsill that catch the light. The times when it hits the glass might be rare. You never knew where you’d find one of these moments, or when. Best not to go looking for them. Keep your eyes open and they’d appear. And for one fleeting moment anyway, you remembered what happiness felt like.'

A lovely, if often heartbreaking story, a family drama with characters that feel as if you know them, and can relate to their hopes and dreams.



Pub Date: 25 Jun 2024

Many thanks for the ARC provided by William Morrow

How The Light Gets In is the sequel to Joyce Maynard's previous book Count The Ways, altough this book can be read as a standalone novel. Both books are about main character Eleanor, whose husband Cam recently passed away. Eleanor has a lot of care for her son Toby, who suffered from brain damage to to an accident in his youth. She moved back from Brookline to the farm in New Hampshire where she can fully take care of Toby, who takes care of the goats. Toby’s older brother, Al, is married and living in Seattle with his wife . Eleanor's daughter Ursula, lives in Vermont with her husband and two children. Ursula is acting distant to her mother, which is sad for Eleanor, because she doesn't know why. The story follow Eleanor during fifteen years between 2010 and 2024, the daily life struggles and the bigger ups and downs, for example when Toby is falsely accused of something in the local community and when he gets seriously ill and her new relationship with Guy and actual events that happen in America and the world, like the recent Covid Pandemic and the storming of te Capitol, the troubles with Ursula and her husband Jake who becomes and alcoholic, and a tragic event between Toby and neighbour Raine, which results in an incident involving Raine's son Spyder.

There is a lot happening in this book. So much that sometimes you wonder if there was a little less happening in it, it would be a faster and stronger story. Because this is quite a long read, and I questioned if some passages of the story truly added to the story. It doesn't have a real strong storyline, it is more character based and the things that happen on a daily basis, altough the characters, especially Toby, make some progress. It was very realistic, and I truly think Eleanor is a very likeable character, but the story was far too long to keep you interested as a reader, a long story is nice with a more thrilling and exciting plot, but if the story is so character based like this one, this doesn't work out very well. In the end there whas a bit more action in the story, but it misses that action in the rest of the book. I have read a few other books by Joyce Maynard in the past, but this not her strongest work and I truly wanted to like it more than I actually did.

Sequel to Count the Ways.
Continuing the life of Eleanor as she returns to her former home to care for her dying ex-husband.
Eleanor has continued to live on the farm. She cares for Toby, who was brain damaged as a child. He cares for his goats and makes friends with everyone, riding his bicycle to town. She is still writing, still involved with her children to the extent they will allow her to be involved. She and her daughter, Ursula, have a rocky relationship and the estrangement grows as the years go by. Ursula's husband is an interesting character and Maynard is able to tie current politics into the story in a skillful way. Her husband's child by his second wife, is just as much a part of her family as those she gave birth to. Eleanor meets an explorer who spends most of his time in Antarctica; they have a relationship over a number of years.

Maynard is able to paint a good picture of Eleanor as she realizes her days are slowly coming to an end. Sad at the realization that she leaves behind unresolved issues. Sad that she still has days when she feels like life shorted her. Days when she realizes her life could not have been fuller. This book was a lovely end to Count the Ways.

HOW THE LIGHT GETS IN
BY: JOYCE MAYNARD

About 3.5 stars!

I didn't read Joyce Maynard's prior novel Count the Ways, more than eight chapters of a sample prior to reading this one. Of the eight chapters that I read I did find it to be much more engaging than this one. This continuation just felt like an info dump and it fell flat. I thought this wasn't organic in the quality of the writing style that I would expect of a literary fiction novel. I feel terrible about not liking it more, but I would be lying if I said that I did. While I applaud Joyce Maynard
as an erudite writer of The Bird Hotel, which I loved and thought was more inspirational and hopeful. I loved her two memoirs. My favorite memoir of all time is written by Joyce Maynard called, At Home in the World, which I highly recommend and it is phenomenal. I also liked her later memoir which is raw and sad called, The Best of Us which tells about finding love again only to lose her new partner to pancreatic cancer. So it's not a question of my not liking this one because it is bleak, since it imparts the wisdom of a writer sharing universal truths about life experience grounded in reality and gained from maturity.

"We don't tell our children who they should be, Eleanor knows now. They tell us."

"Here's the thing about the day a baby is born---if you're lucky, and her health is good.
For that one moment in time---never again, probably---a parent can still believe that
everything is possible. Everything can be perfect. Just as well new parents don't know
all the hard things that await them. For this one brief moment anyway, everything
remains possible. Eleanor feels this now."

There are many pearls of wisdom that Joyce Maynard gifts the reader with. My disappointment lies in how this is written in a tell me instead showing me the way that I prefer. Here's an example after Eleanor the estranged mother of her daughter Ursula finds out about the birth of her transgender daughter Alison who now identifies as male named Al has just had a baby with his wife Teresa. The baby's name is Flora.

"Flora. Our little flower, Eleanor says. She thinks of Cam---then Flora's grandfather
whom she will never know. Like Toby, Cam loved babies. He would have loved being
a grandfather to this one. Locating the pure joy he took from spending time with young
children was something he was uniquely good at. Maybe because he didn't worry so much,
as Eleanor did, about all the practical details of taking care of things, he did better at that
probably, than she had.
Now, as Eleanor thinks about this new grandchild, and the two already born, she's ready
to do better, if her children will allow her to. Maybe Ursula's reluctance to let Eleanor
into her life, and that of her children, stems from this---her memory of how wound
up and occasionally out of control her mother could be on occasion, those times Eleanor
thinks of her visits to Crazyland. (sic) She understands now how much those times
must have scared her children---Ursula most of all, maybe. Eleanor wishes Ursula
could know that she doesn't pour wine over her head as she did on more than one occasion
when her children were young. But Ursula's spent so little time with her mother in the
last many years, she barely knows who Eleanor is anymore. Ursula does not know Eleanor,
as she is now.
Eleanor has never again done what she did that Christmas morning when the children
were small, and she was frustrated with Cam for watching a ball game while she worked,
and just plain exhausted from yet another attempt at creating, for her family, the appear-
ance of a happy Christmas: she picked up the Buche de Noel she'd just finished construct-
ing for their big holiday meal and smashed it into the garbage."

While I never did anything like that and I'm not judging, the narrative unfolds like the above throughout this novel. I certainly know how overwhelming it is to raise young children and I truly felt bad for the way Eleanor was treated by Ursula. Parent estrangement with adult children no doubt is painful and it's not the message that bothered me. It's just not written in a way that I enjoy feeling it unfold with the info dump style of writing as a storytelling technique. I didn't get absorbed into the plot and I couldn't connect to the characters as much as I would have liked. I did like what Joyce Maynard shares about the message, just not a fan of lack of character development for everybody except Eleanor and Toby. I loved both of them and could feel their close relationship on an intimate level. I just would have liked to see more development of Eleanor's other children and the other characters in the novel.

"Becoming a grandparent means getting a second chance to do it right."

A Five Star for the many relatable messages, because I don't know a parent that exists that is perfect. I'm sure we all can look back at things that if we could go back and do it again we would do something different. I didn't exactly relate to some of the questionable choices Eleanor did, but I could see that she tried to be better. We all do the best we can and this is a heartfelt story that is rich. Again, I love the concept just not the delivery. Another issue that didn't work for me were the heavy issues regarding politics. They are presented in a loud way so that they are impossible to overlook. It is very evident exactly where this author's personal viewpoints lean towards, which I thought got tedious, personally, and were a factor of my overall rating.

Publication Date: June 25, 2024

Thank you to Net Galley, Joyce Maynard and William Morrow for generously providing me with my eARC in exchange for a fair and honest review. All opinions are my own.

#HowtheLightGetsIn #JoyceMaynard #WilliamMorrow #NetGalley

This is my third book by Joyce Maynard in just a few months. I have to say that I loved them all! She has such an easy writing style. Her characters are all so likeable. I will wait patiently for her next one!

For those of us who are Joyce Maynard devotees, the first quarter of the book was just a rehash of the book Count the Ways. I understand why the author wanted to make this a standalone book, but I found the first quarter boring. The rest of the book I enjoyed especially because I am around the same age as the author and I identify with a lot of the trials and tribulations of Eleanor, the main character. All of the characters are vivid on the page, and the descriptions of Eleanor’s emotional life are well written.

I loved reading this book.

I loved Count the Ways and was really looking forward to this continuation of the story. When Cam is diagnosed with cancer, Eleanor returns to the farm to care for him and Toby. This book goes deeper into all of the characters lives and motivations. The story takes place from 2010 to current day and current events are brought into the story (politics, COVID, Black Lives Matter, climate change and more). I really enjoyed the relationships between the adult children, especially with Toby. New characters are also added to the main characters in Count the Ways. Some parts of the story felt repetitive to me and there was too much political commentary. Also, Eleanor's main romantic interest in this book did not make sense to me for her character.
Thank you Netgalley and William Morrow Publishing for the advance reader's copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

I was so happy to hear that there would be a sequel to Count the Ways which received a rare 5 star rating from me. I was so invested in the lives of Eleanor and her family, it was great to pick up where the first book left off and hear the rest of their story. Yes, there is some repetition as Maynard covers the main plot points from Count the Ways, but I understand it allows this book to be a stand alone if readers don't want to read both books. Many of the recaps also take a deeper dive into what took place in the first book.
How the Light Gets In follows Eleanor and her family right up until present day and into the future. I really loved this sequel. It touches upon many themes such as parenting adult children, the importance of family, accepting life's imperfections and celebrating the small moments in life. I love that music is also woven into the stories of each character. The storyline leaves not doubt as to Maynard's political leanings. While I don't have a problem with the political storylines, I hope it doesn't put off potential readers who don't agree with her politics. They will be missing out on a great story with many meaningful messages. A huge thanks to Netgalley and William Morrow for providing an ARC of this book.