Jodi Lynn Anderson’s “Each Night Was Illuminated” Gets Starred Booklist Review
Advanced Review – Uncorrected Proof
Each Night Was Illuminated.
By Jodi Lynn Anderson
Sept. 2022. 256p. HarperCollins/Quill Tree, $17.99 (9780062393579). Gr. 9–12
Cassie is an island unto herself. The middle of three children, she's found herself—or placed herself—in the position of primary caregiver for her beloved younger brother, Gabe, and her fears about his well-being threaten to overwhelm her. At 11, she witnessed a tragic train accident alongside classmate Elias, and since then, though she still wants to be a nun, her faith in God and religion has steadily waned. In her church-centric town, that's a loss of faith that only contributes to her feelings of isolation, and she finds herself more adrift than ever as Elias abruptly comes back into her life their senior year of high school. The train accident the two saw as children took the lives of a family of hotel owners; that hotel, now run-down and abandoned, is scheduled for demolition at the end of the summer, and Elias is determined to find the ghosts of the family that once lived there. What blossoms between Elias and Cassie is a careful, covert nighttime friendship as Cassie, melancholic and apprehensive, holds Elias, her feelings for him, and her own desire to step foot into the world at brittle arm's length. With searing prose, Anderson lays bare Cassie's heart, documenting one girl's growing understanding of the fragility of the world and calculating as she does the equal dangers of living in it and of failing to. Tender and wise.
— Maggie Reagan
