Well written book on an immigrant family with secrets. Particularly appreciated the non-linear plot and the lack of a "happily ever after" resolution

Thanks to audiobook sync for this book

2.5 stars. This could've been a really hard hitting and poignant story about family, adoption, art, suicide, queerness, and grief. But it was just.......boring.

I enjoyed the art themes; the friendship between Danny and Harry; the high school senior year/pre-college anxiety; and Danny building up to coming out.

Unfortunately that's about it.

Above all, this book is boring. Nothing happens for 200 pages and those 200 pages are seemingly devoid of plot. You can't tell if the author is deliberately obscuring things from the reader for the purposes of a plot twist, or if she's just unintentionally confusing the reader.

When the plot twist - and plot - are eventually revealed, things start to pick up. It tackles some complex themes and a really difficult and sad family history. However, unfortunately the story remains obfuscated by parents who stubbornly refuse to tell their son the truth, and it's annoying as fuck as a reader. While I appreciate that it's realistic & some parents would behave in this way, it leads to a really unpleasant and frustrating reading experience with little payoff.

Additionally, I wish the art had been explored in more depth. I just came off the back of Emily XR Pan's The Astonishing Colour of After, which explores art in the most beautiful and immersive way. In that book you can practically visualise the colours and the protagonist's pencil strokes, but in Picture Us in the Light, it's like hearing about someone who swears they're good at art, but never actually shows you.

I also didn't love the writing style. It's fairly plain and straight forward, but unfortunately that also means it's devoid of colour and emotion. And this book needed colour and emotion.

I should've listened to my gut and DNFed this at 100 pages.

This book was sent to me by the publishers as a part of the teenreads.com teen board for an honest review.

From the author of CONVICTION, Kelly Loy Gilbert’s newest novel PICTURE US IN THE LIGHT is about a queer Asian American boy named Danny Cheng, whose life is set for him when he receives a scholarship for his dream college. As he starts to finish his last year of high school, his parents start acting differently, and Danny’s dreams of college seem to be going down the drain. The closer Danny looks into his parents past, the clearer everything becomes clear for him, and when it does, he’ll have no choice but to reassess his entire life choices. PICTURE US IN THE LIGHT is Kelly Loy Gilbert’s second young adult fiction novel.

There’s a lot to like about PICTURE US IN THE LIGHT, and while I didn’t enjoy it as much as I was hoping to, I believe that it is a novel that has a lot to offer to readers. For starters, Danny Cheng is one of the most realistic main characters I’ve ever read about; he’s extremely flawed, and has some considerably unredeemable qualities, but is also is also honest in a way that doesn’t feel overdramatic. A lot of the novel has to do with Danny’s internal struggle of identity and daring to do the right thing, which I loved but did get a bit repetitive at certain plot points of the story. Danny’s voice was beautiful, and the intelligent clear-cut writing in the novel helped strengthen his voice even more.

The novel deals with multiple heavy issues that need to be discussed more often. The first of these being child abuse and suicide. In the novel, one of Danny’s friends committed suicide in the past year, and even after a year later it is still affecting his community. Danny shows us how the suicide broke everyone who ever knew Sandra (the girl who committed suicide) and how people are afraid to discuss the matter due to the fear that someone else will attempt suicide. This is especially apparent at Danny’s high school, where it was forbidden to talk about the entire matter. In fact, it gets to the point where Danny and his friends go against the school and publish an article about it on the school paper. This is an important scene because it really raises the question of how we as people should address these types of situations when they occur.

Not only that, but PICTURE US IN THE LIGHT has a discussion on racism and immigration that was well handled. Danny has a lot to say on this certain subject matter; there are multiple moments where he feels trapped due to his race and how it affects his life (while I would love to be more specific about this part, it would spoil the book). Just about most of the cast in this novel are Asian American, and almost all of them are well fleshed out and complex.

There was also an extremely small subplot that had to do with Danny’s romantic feelings towards his best friend Harry. While usually I don’t like romances in books, I was okay with this one because it didn’t feel forced and didn’t get in the way of the story. Seeing an unexpected male-male romance that wasn’t overdone was something I enjoyed, so I thought I would mention that.

As you can see, there’s a lot to love about PICTURE US THE LIGHT. There is, however, one big issue that I had with the novel that ruined part of my enjoyment. This being the pacing. Now I know this isn’t a huge issue for most people, which is why I would still recommend this book to those who interested in it, but I absolutely despise books that have extremely slow pacing. This is around a 360-page book, and it doesn’t really pick up the pace until we get around 125 or so pages into it. The first half was so excruciatingly slow that it took me forever to trudge through the first half. While it did make up for it in the end with an amazing second half, I couldn’t help but feel annoyed at the fact that it was so slow.

Once again, while I didn’t love PICTURE US IN THE LIGHT as much as I was hoping to, I would still suggest those who are interested in reading it to pick it up because I’m positive they will enjoy it more than I did. PICTURE US IN THE LIGHT has everything you need for the perfect coming of age story: thoughtful social commentary on how Asian Americans are viewed today, discussion on suicide and how one moves on after a tragic event like that happens, along with honest and raw writing.

I’m going to spend some time today writing a review of Kelly Loy Gilbert’s two books I’ve read because she has a special talent and I want to take the time and write about how I feel about her writing and her books. She deserves it! Once I’m done, I’ll share it.

Free from Bookish First, review is my own.

It took me a long time to be ready for this book but I am so happy I stayed with it. Really good emotional read.

Before starting this book, I totally thought the author was someone my age (just out of college), trying to create his or her legacy as a writer - starting with their own home town (and essentially mine) Cupertino. So I had pretty big expectations. I wanted it to present us in a positive, high-achieving, innovative light, and to also tackle but not over or under exaggerate the stresses and competitions and lack of worldly views or culture. I was ready to be super critical.

I was like "why are these arbitrary side character names so diverse! all my classmates were either Sarah, Jessica, Kevin, or Rahul" and I was like "people's lives here aren't this exciting, and they're more about academics, blah blah". But then I just decided to read, and enjoy this book. I was soon captured and heavily invested. The ending really got me and like my experience with other YA books, I cried a little and felt unsatisfied but I guess I could still manage to squeeze out some sort of moral of the story...

My dad also proceeded to read this book after me too (not sure how he felt though, but the fact that he went through the whole thing states something).