Under the Light

November 1, 2013

Gr 9 Up-During an excruciatingly miserable scene in the family "Prayer Corner," Jenny exercises her ability to mentally leave her body-but this time she stays away for days. In this state, her spirit meets a boy in a field, Billy, who left his body during a substance-abuse-induced coma. Their innocent, but exalted, friendship ends abruptly when they are called back to their physical bodies. They have no memory of their former relationship but there is concrete evidence of a steamy romance between them left by the two ghosts who occupied their bodies in their absence in A Certain Slant of Light (Houghton Harcourt, 2005). In fact, the collateral damage done by these ghosts is so severe that one of them, Helen, is compelled to return from heaven to try to help Jenny. Jenny and Billy manage to figure out what has been going on and staunchly deal with the new complications in their lives on top of coping with the old stresses that caused them to leave their bodies in the first place. Helen's return is sometimes a hindrance but ultimately helps Jenny as together they face the worst moments in her life. Coping with her pain and purging her resentment leave Jenny ready to grow and move on-and she refuses to leave Billy behind. An unusual first love tale, Under the Lightwill appeal to a wider audience than A Certain Slant of Light but reading that book first would definitely make it easier to follow.-Kathy Cherniavsky, Ridgefield Library, CT

Copyright 2013 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

March 15, 2013
Teens overcome troubled lives through metaphysical and spiritual opportunities in this poetic sequel. After being humiliated by her zealot father and unsupportive mother, Jenny drifts away, leaving her body open for Helen, a 130-year-old ghost still mourning her untimely death. A ghostly companion to creative people, Helen seizes the opportunity to become corporeal and connect with kindred spirit James, who occupies the body of drug-abusing juvenile delinquent Billy. Helen only uses Jenny for six days, but even the gentlest spirits can cause destruction, and Jenny unwillingly returns from an astral-projection adventure to a shattered life and ruined reputation. She seeks comfort in Billy's company, and together they try to come to terms with their trauma and to remember their out-of-body experiences. To chilling effect, Whitcomb skillfully incorporates the unsettling and grotesque aspects of the living teens' family lives--Billy's abusive childhood, Jenny's fanatical parents (like characters from a Stephen King novel)--and Helen's disastrous death and separation from her daughter. Jenny's and Helen's voices are distinct and passionate, though the shifts between narrators and planes of existence can be disorienting. Jenny's reconstruction of events revisits the same characters and setting as A Certain Slant of Light (2005) but offers further literary and elegiac contemplation of life, love and the afterlife. Life proves as haunting as death in this well-crafted ghost story. (Paranormal romance. 14 & up)

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May 15, 2013
Grades 8-11 Whitcomb returns to the ghostly world she so cleverly created in A Certain Slant of Light (2005). This time, 130-year-old spirit Helen has occasion to inhabit Jenny, a contemporary teen whose fundamentalist Christian parents go past the limit of acting abusively in their efforts to curtail their daughter's social life. Meanwhile, Helen's old love, James, possesses the body of Jenny's ne'er-do-well classmate, Billy. Although choppier in phrasing and world building than the original story, this new title expands a compelling concept while introducing readers to characters who must stretch to make the best of circumstances that they did not necessarily create.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2013, American Library Association.)

July 1, 2013
This companion novel to A Certain Slant of Light examines Jenny and Billy's relationship--both the ethereal and the corporeal. As the two struggle to make sense of their lives after spirits Helen and James borrowed their bodies, Helen complicates things by trying to reconnect with Jenny. Whitcomb's ghostly love story reworks the first book's themes, but fans may welcome this second visitation.

(Copyright 2013 by The Horn Book, Incorporated, Boston. All rights reserved.)