Book Review | 100 Days of Sunlight by Abbie Emmons

Title: 100 Days of Sunlight
Author: Abbie Emmons
Publication Date: 7th August 2019
Format: Ebook via Netgalley
Target Audience: Young Adult
Genre: Contemporary

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Synopsis  

When 16-year-old poetry blogger Tessa Dickinson is involved in a car accident and loses her eyesight for 100 days, she feels like her whole world has been turned upside-down.

Terrified that her vision might never return, Tessa feels like she has nothing left to be happy about. But when her grandparents place an ad in the local newspaper looking for a typist to help Tessa continue writing and blogging, an unlikely answer knocks at their door: Weston Ludovico, a boy her age with bright eyes, an optimistic smile…and no legs.

Knowing how angry and afraid Tessa is feeling, Weston thinks he can help her. But he has one condition — no one can tell Tessa about his disability. And because she can’t see him, she treats him with contempt: screaming at him to get out of her house and never come back. But for Weston, it’s the most amazing feeling: to be treated like a normal person, not just a sob story. So he comes back. Again and again and again.

Tessa spurns Weston’s “obnoxious optimism”, convinced that he has no idea what she’s going through. But Weston knows exactly how she feels and reaches into her darkness to show her that there is more than one way to experience the world. As Tessa grows closer to Weston, she finds it harder and harder to imagine life without him — and Weston can’t imagine life without her. But he still hasn’t told her the truth, and when Tessa’s sight returns he’ll have to make the hardest decision of his life: vanish from Tessa’s world…or overcome his fear of being seen.

Rating

 

 My Thoughts

 

"No one has ever seen the light by being told there are darker places out there"

 

This wasn't necessarily a bad book, I just don't think it was the right book for me. This book was actually an eARC that I received from Netgalley over a year ago and never managed to finish. I read the first couple of chapters and wasn't really feeling it but I'm trying to get my Netgalley ratio back up so I was determined to finish and review it this time around.

 

In this novel we follow two teenagers who are both dealing with coming to terms with their respective disabilities. Tessa, a blogger, has recently been in a car accident and is temporarily blind whilst Weston had his legs amputated a few years prior due to an unfortunate accident. Tessa needs someone to dictate her poetry too and Weston volunteers in order to be close to someone who doesn't know he wears prosthetic legs.

We'll start off with what I liked about this book. I liked the fact that we were following the relationship between two disabled characters and that we got to see them accept each wholeheartedly and that they could relate to the others experiences. I also liked how the sections of the book were divided up. Weston is trying to show Tessa that there's more to the world then just being able to see, so the different parts were titled after the other four senses; smell, taste, sound and touch. I just thought it was a cute way of dividing it up. I also quite liked the flashback chapters when we got to read about Weston's accident and how he adapted and also getting to learn more about his family and friends. 

 

I think one of my main problems with this book was the writing. It had so much potential but the dialogue and the simplistic tone just felt really cheesy to me and not in a good way. There were just so many sentence choices where I read it and just went huh? For example, "it's called yestersummer, like yesteryear, but different." I just don't understand what point this sentence is trying to make!? Or the inclusion of metaphors like "it's a joyful, freeing sound, like the first scratch of a quill pen on the Declaration of Independence." It just baffled me. This book is self published so I feel that with some editing and revision it could have been so much better.      

Tessa was my least favourite character out of the two. I sympathised with her but I also found her incredibly annoying and just a bit self-centered. I wanted her to grow on me by the end of the book but unfortunately she just didn't. Weston was slightly better but I still didn't really feel much connection to him and he came across a bit forceful at times. Their romance was cute, but there was a severe lack of communication when it came to talking about their feelings. It's pretty obvious that you like each so just talk already! 

 

I think someone else could really like this book but I just didn't click with it the way I wanted too. I didn't particularly like the writing (especially the dialogue, it actually drove me nuts) and the characters just weren't likeable to me. It also didn't feel realistic to me at times, like the author cut a few corners for the plotlines to connect such as scenes involving Weston's recovery. There was so much potential here but just not for me in the end. 

 

I received an eARC copy of this book via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review. Thank you to Netgalley and Abbie Emmons for providing me with a copy.