Book Review | The Light That Gets Lost By Natasha Carthew

Title: The Light That Gets Lost

Author: Natasha Carthew

Publisher: Bloomsbury

Published: November 5th 2015

Rating: 🌟 🌟

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A small boy hiding in a cupboard witnesses something no child should ever see. He tries not to look but he still hears it. And when he comes out, there’s no mistaking. His mum and dad have been killed. And though he’s only small, he swears that he’ll get revenge one day.

Years later, Trey enters a strange camp that is meant to save troubled teenagers. It’s packed with crazies, god-botherers, devoted felons and broken kids. Trey’s been in and out of trouble ever since the day the bad thing happened, but he’s he not here for saving: this is where he’ll find the man who did it. Revenge and healing, salvation and hell are a boiling, dangerous mix, and Trey finds himself drawn to a girl, a dream and the offer of friendship in the dark.

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The Light That Gets Lost is a book that promises revenge and doesn’t even deliver an ounce of it. Considering the genre, it’s such a short book to the point where it feels unfinished because 1) it leaves a lot of unanswered questions and 2) the story ventures from one plot to something completely other.

I didn’t particularly care for any of the characters, from the protagonist, Trey, to the kids he meets at the juvenile camp – irritating Lamby, love-interest(?) Kay and the mute twins whose names I honestly can’t remember. The only thing I enjoyed about the latter half of the book was the friendship between these particular characters when everything turned to Lord Of The Flies shit. This was a turn I was not expecting at all. One minute, these kids are in a civilised camp run on Christian values and the next minute they’ve been abandoned by the adults and start killing each other. So much for a revenge plot.

Given the subject matter, the writing style is unusual and metaphorical which made for a really strange reading experience. It’s overly descriptive most of the time and there is also a lot of unnecessary dialogue. I don’t even want to imagine how much shorter this book would be if these things were cut out. The pace, however, is pretty fast but that doesn’t necessary work in favour of this particular story given the length.

Overall, this book was just confusing, to say the least. I definitely would not recommend.

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