Shine

by Lauren Myracle

• ISBN10: 0606238212
• ISBN13: 9780606238212
• Publish Date: 1 February 2012 (first published 1 May 2011)
• Publish Status: Out of Print
• Out of Print: 6 April 2021
• Imprint: Turtleback Books
• Edition: Bound for Schools & Libraries ed.
• Format: Hardcover (Library Binding)
• Pages: 376
• Language: English

Reviews

[Bianca]

Tomorrows and tomorrows and tomorrows, and who knew what was in store for any of us? What I did know—maybe all I knew—is that we got to play a role in deciding.

— Dark and suspenseful. I liked how it wasn’t just a mystery book, but a coming-of-age one as well. I liked the story and the characterizations. My only issue was the pacing.

[leahrosereads]

3.5 Stars

I read SHINE for Anti-Bullying Week, and while it was a decent book, I had some issues with connecting with the main character, Cat.

Of course, there’s the age difference. As an adult who enjoys reading YA, I don’t actually believe that’s ever a true issue with my disconnect with a main character, and I don’t believe it was here. For this book, it was the religious differences between Cat and I. I like to believe that I’m a good person, and Cat seemed like one too, but her faith in God and her church community was something that I just found very naive. It’s absolutely because I wasn’t raised in that environment, and I attempted really hard to look past it. However, it was such an important part of her being, that to look past it, would have removed depth from Cat, and I just didn’t want to ruin the book for myself.

And it wasn’t just Cat, the community itself was a very religious one, and while I thought Cat’s faith was genuine, there were other characters in the book (and I think it was done on purpose) whose faith seemed false, or that they weren’t quite as open and all about love and understanding as the Bible and Christians like to preach. I don’t know.


What I do know, is that outside of the religious aspects and undertones of the characters, the story itself was interesting. I really enjoyed the mystery elements of it, and Cat’s Nancy Drewing it up for most of the book. I wanted justice for Patrick, and I thought that he was due it. To be openly gay in any community can be tough, but for a small rural community (I grew up in one just not in the South), Patrick had some serious strength to be willing and to want to be out and proud.

I really liked that Myracle was able to keep me interested in the story from start to finish, and while I couldn’t connect to the characters on my religious (or lack thereof) views, I was happy that I was able to connect with these characters on other levels. Each one of them was flawed in very real ways, and it helped make this story believable and a real worthy read.

So while I may have had some issues with the characters themselves, overall the story won me over, and the characters themselves by the end of the novel, took shape and I was able to look past my personal issues and just enjoy the story for what it was.


I thought that Myracle did an outstanding job at creating SHINE and, I’ll definitely be willing to try other novels by her in the future.

[nannah]

This book was so sad and beautiful.

More than that, the entire book, everything in and about it, was character-driven. It seemed real, not planned out and outlined, with little check-boxes ticked off. Each character was flawed, horribly flawed, and their interactions with each other, and themselves, were perfect and beautiful. I can't even describe how fleshed-out all these characters were, and how originally and perfectly they were presented and unfolded. The whole pacing with Cat's horrible encounter with Tommy, how the details trickle out a little more at each further mention was so well-done.

And then . . . and then I came to the part where the title suddenly made sense to me. I'm sure it happened at different times for different readers, but when it happened for me, I literally had tears in my eyes. I won't spoil anything about that, though.

[clementine]

I think I was expecting more out of this book because the premise seemed incredibly promising. This is a subject that isn't often tackled in YA, and I feel like Myracle could have done so much more with it.

I enjoyed parts of Shine a lot. I thought that Myracle's world building was fantastic. I'm from a big city in Canada, yet I felt transported to this tiny Southern town torn apart by meth and poverty. It was incredibly atmospheric and the writing was very descriptive. I also liked the characters, and how they all had different sides to them. Nobody is entirely one way.

I almost wish the hate crime angle had been explored more. The eventual conclusion seemed like a cop out. If you're going to write about a hate crime, commit to it, dammit. Everything with Jason also felt forced and artificial. I wish Beef had been explored a bit more, and I wish there had been more about Patrick and Cat's friendship. We were told they were best friends, but I didn't feel like I explicitly knew that.

Also, big issue: I figured it out pretty early on.

I'm torn between 3 and 4 stars but I'm feeling generous today.

[celinenyx]

A beautiful tale of finding yourself again after a traumatising event.

Cat has been pushing everyone around her away. Now, her best friend, who is gay, is the victim of a horrible hate crime, and Cat is determined to find out who did it. Set in a small Southern town, there are a lot of people that don't want Cat poking around...

This book is one hell of a journey. Cat has been shutting all of her relatives and friends out. She couldn't stand to be around them. She was scared and angry, but hid all of her feelings within herself, turning into an empty shell of her former self. When her best friend, with whom she hasn't talked for years, is beat up so bad that he is in a coma, she finally fights her past and tries to find out who hurt him.

What I really loved about this book is Ms. Myracle's beautifully uncomplicated but unforgiving writing. She isn't afraid to talk about difficult issues like addiction, rape and abuse. All these problems come together in a small Southern town, where a lot of people live in poverty. This is all described so truthfully, without going into graphic explanations. This still is written for a young-adult public, but the issues touched upon by this book is interesting for both young and old.

Our narrator Cat is a great character. She lives in hard circumstances, but grows into an independent and strong girl. She faces her past with an admiringly courage. Cat is not perfect, and she has certainly done things that she regrets, but overall she is a good girl. She is not the smartest girl either, but that made the story even more believable for me.

This is a dark tale, a great story with characters you ache for. There is quite some suspense going on, with a thrilling denouement at the end. Shine gives a message of hope. I would certainly recommend this book.

[Suz @ Bookish Revelations]

“Stunned residents of Black Creek, North Carolina, pray for seventeen year old Patrick Truman, beaten and left for dead outside the convenience store where he works.” Shine pp 11

Shine, is the first book I’ve had the pleasure of reading written by Lauren Myracle and I was extremely jazzed about getting the galley for the digital ARC a few days ago. It didn’t take me very long at all to read it. From the first sentence to the last, I was drawn in and was unable to put the book down. In the end, I was not disappointed.

From the moment that I read the synopsis provided through goodreads, I decided this was a book that I had to read for many different reasons and I knew that I wouldn’t just be reading for it personal enjoyment, even though I did enjoy it quite a bit. I was truly invested in the storyline and the characters, the depiction of the small mountain town of Asheville, North Carolina, among other things the book seemed to offer.

It wasn’t easy reading this book from an emotional stand point, but I do believe that it was a story that needed to be told and Lauren Myracle did a wonderful job of doing just that. From growing up in a small town myself, it wasn’t hard at all for me to look at a few of these characters in question and think to myself, “I know this person; I grew up with someone just like them.”

The small town mentality, the poverty, the prejudices, the drugs (meth, which seemed to be the drug of choice featured in this particular novel) and the other issues she touched upon were written very well, delicately handled with aplomb, and illustrated in such a way that it wasn’t hard to feel something other than hatred, something more akin to compassion in a manner of thinking when you stripped the whole story down to the core and just really looked at it – guts and all.

The element of mystery the novel provided was there and held strong with each turn of the page. In fact, I was pretty sure that it was one particular character that had done it up until a certain point based on other things that he had done or had happened prior, but then the author surprised me by proving my theory wrong. I was delighted with this aspect.

I want to applaud her for bringing to light how backwards that small town was, how ready those people were to look the other way and just bury whatever bad had happened. It was very much a feel of, “don’t go beggin’ for trouble next door, you do best to mind your own” something that I’d grown up hearing on a few different occasions in my life which meant, “Don’t you be drawing too much attention because it could be the wrong kind it’s just not you’re place.”

Shine does a wonderful job of illustrating self-loathing, to the point of losing yourself or a loved one to the use of drugs. It’s a very terrifying and lonely place to find oneself in, especially if you’re wielding that self-loathing onto someone else without even realizing that you’ve become the monster that you’ve always protected them from. Which, is why I say that in a way, the story possesses not just hatred, but compassion of some kind for the person(s) lost; I take that away from the book with a line towards the end.

“It was right to be sad when sad things happened.” Shine, pp 356

I found myself going back and forth on who my favorite character was, but when you get down to it I think I ended up identifying the most with Cat and I quite enjoyed her. I like that she was determined to find out what happened to Patrick and once she did, she was still able to have love and compassion in her heart. Everything isn’t black and white, life just isn’t that simple and nor should it be.

Cat’s brother, Christian, illustrates that for reader’s easily. In a town as small as Asheville was, where everybody knows everyone else and gossip is just as prevalent in the Church as it would be in the local beauty parlor, not many choices were easily available to the town’s people and they had to make do or find themselves making nice with other’s they might not normally like.

More than anything, I’m grateful that she decided to shine on a light on hate crimes that happen instead of just sweeping them under the rug like yesterday’s dirt trekked in across a linoleum kitchen floor and look the other way out the adjacent window adorning the next wall. It’s hard to read, but it’s worth it. And I truly hope that this book can inspire bravery in others to step forward and to not go “quietly into that good night.”