Into the Light (The Light, #1)

by Aleatha Romig

[Melanie]

My review and an extended sample of the audiobook are posted at Hotlistens.com.

I’ve been wanting to read Aleatha Romig for a while. Ever since I listened to her on a panel at RT15. I knew she wrote some Dark Romance type stories. When I read the review for her newest book, Into the Light, on Caffeinated Book Reviewer, I knew I had to start with this book. This was so, not what I was expecting. Not only did meet my expectations, it exceeded them. This book is a suspense book with some romance elements to it.

So this story is told mostly from three POVs. We have Stella Montgomery, who is an investigative journalist in Detroit. Her main case right now is looking for her best friend who is missing. We have Sara Adams, who wakes up in a hospital room of a cult from an apparent truck wreck, but she doesn’t remember anything from before the wreck. Lastly, our last main POV is Jacob Adams, Sara’s husband, he is a member of the cult and very high up in the hierarchy. The cult is located in rural Alaska.

I’m going to start by talking about Sara. She feels something is off about the situation that she is in. As she goes through retraining to relearn all the rules and teachings of Father Gabriel, the leader of The Light, she just feels like it isn’t right. Her husband and her friends in the cult continue to tell her that this is the life that she’s been living. They have her eyes bandaged from the wreck and her leg is in a cast, so she is very dependent on others. Slowly the remove the full leg cast for a walking cast and then eventually remove the bandages on her eyes. She’s frustrated because she can’t even remember what color her hair is, much less who she is. Her husband teaches her that her actions and words have consequences. It is his responsibility to guide her and correct her when needed. She should not question his wisdom or any men for that matter.

We learn a lot more about the cult and how things are run there from Jacob’s POV. He is fairly high up in the leadership and part of the Assembly, which affords him a lot more respect and responsibility. As a pilot for the cult, he is also privy to things others don’t know. He is charged with picking up supplies for the remove Alaska group. He also has to take Father Gabriel to the other locations, another remote one in the west of the lower 48 (I can’t remember the exact location) and one in Detroit (where they get most of their recruits).

Lastly, there is Stella. She is the best investigative journalist for her boss’s station. However, she has been really sidetracked by the loss of her best friend. Her boss has given her a lot of freedom to research the loss, but he also needs his best journalist back. While going to view a dead body at the morgue, someone who was potentially her friend, Molly, she learns that several women are turning up dead. The problem is trying to tie all the deaths together. Nothing about the dead girls are similar. Different ages, races, socially, where they fall on societal ladder, they are all completely different. The cause of deaths are all different too. Some appear to be accidents and some not as much. It is really dumbfounding. Her detective boyfriend is trying to keep her out of some of the dangerous parts of town, but she is determined to learn more about these deaths and see if there is a link to Molly.

There is so much that happens in this story, but I don’t want to go into any more detail so as not to give away any spoilers. I really loved how this story is told so we have more information than any one of the characters. Even having all of this information, we are still in the dark about many things.

There are a ton of twists and turns in this story. I was glued to my earbuds. I didn’t want to stop listening. When the POV changed between Sara/Jacob in Alaska and Stella in Detroit, was disappointed in that I wanted to continue to know what was going to happen. Then less than a minute later, I was just as intrigued by the other person’s POV. Both the story that was going on in Detroit and the story that was going on in Alaska were phenomenal. I didn’t want to leave either, even to go back to the other story that I loved also. I did love how the story was told. I don’t want to make it sound like I was any way disappointed in how the story was told, I’m just trying to get out there how much I was into each part of the story. They were both exceptional.

I will say that this story ends with a whopper of a cliffhanger. Luckily, the next book, Away from the Dark, comes out in October, so I don’t have to wait too long. This series is a duet, so the next book will conclude the series. I’m really excited to see what happens to Sara, Jacob, Stella and everyone in The Light.

Narration
So this book has three narrators, Kevin T. Collins, Erin deWard, and Noah Michael Levine. Kevin T. Collins narrates the parts that are told in Jacob’s POV. Erin deWard narrates the parts that are told from Sara and Stella’s POV. Noah Michael Levine has a very small part in this book and does the POV of the boss. I’m assuming that he will have more POV time in the next book and they wanted the narrators to stay the same (book two isn’t up for preorder yet on audio, so I’m just assuming and hoping). I really enjoyed the narration of all three narrators. Collins did a great job with both the male and female voices. I thought he really brought out Jacob’s assertiveness and personality. deWard did a great job with both Stella and Sara. You could really tell the differences between the two women from her narration. Stella being more assertive, while Sara was very submissive, but yet not really wanting to be. She also did a great job with showing Sara’s unease at filling this role in The Light that she wasn’t quite sure how to play. Levine’s part was very small, so it was hard to get a good read on him. The little bit we got was good though. I look forward to getting into the next book. I’m hoping that they stick with the same group.