“The thing about roads is sometimes you happen upon them again. Sometimes you get another chance to travel down the same path.”
I have to start by saying by how much I absolutely loved this book! Which makes it slightly harder to put those many thoughts to words. This beautiful story about love wraps you up completely in its warm blanket. “The Light We Lost” may not be your usual romance novel; it goes beyond the underlying theme of love. It explores the nuanced complexities of love, the compromises and the “what ifs” that unconsciously come with it.
It’s September 11, 2001, as the skyline of New York City is being reduced to ashes, Lucy and Gabe meet. That gruesome moment that shredded the city tied them together. They first meet at Columbia and they knew that the spark they felt wasn’t going to fade out so quickly. Now a year later, as they meet again on Lucy’s birthday, they start their whirlwind romance. Which lasted long enough to linger around in Lucy’s mind long after they part ways. Gabe had a way of sneaking back into her thoughts, as Lucy decides to move on and starts a new life with Darren. He had that hold on her Lucy didn’t want to let go off.
Narrated from Lucy’s point of view, reading this story was like peeking into Lucy’s most cherished intimate thoughts and memories of her and Gabe. From the moment they zealously fell in love to the time their dreams became bigger and that love wasn’t enough. Lucy and Gabe are two people who are meant to be and in spite of the curveballs fate throws at them, they are two people, who can’t seem to make it last because of the choices they make.
With the grisly backdrop of 9/11, it was so refreshing to read a tale about love emerging out of it. Jill Santopolo has written this book with such ease that reading it was as breezy. Very rarely do I find a love story that has me immersed from the first page, with “The Light We Lost”, I didn’t want to put it down. Each chapter reflects on a moment from Lucy’s scrapbook of her past with Gabe and filling pages with the new memories she is creating with Darren. Santopolo so humanely composes the intricacies of the two protagonists, portraying them with their raw emotions, which only makes their anguish and choices so relatable.
If you secretly like to believe in the hidden romantic you are, you need to read this book! It’s going to fill your heart and leave you with all the feels.
“Love does that. It makes you feel infinite and invincible, like the whole world is open to you, anything is achievable, and each day will be filled with wonder. Maybe it’s the act of opening yourself up, letting someone else in— or maybe it’s the act of caring so deeply about another person that it expands your heart.”