I sometimes find it hard to write reviews of books that I loved, and I REALLY loved this one.

Light from Uncommon Stars is one of the strangest books I’ve ever read. It seamlessly mixes aliens, donuts, music, Southern California, and deals with hell into a story about family and identity and trans self-acceptance. None of the pieces of this story should work together, and yet all of them do.

I loved Shizuka and Lan’s angsty but ultimately sweet and straightforward relationship. I loved the explorations of family legacy and gendered generational trauma and how easily parents can hurt their children without even knowing it.

Olive Garden played a weirdly important role in this book?

All of this makes Light from Uncommon Stars sound sweet and bizarre and cozy and comforting, and it is all of those things. It’s also extremely heavy. One of the main characters, Katrina Nguyen, is a trans teenage girl who runs away from home and gets caught up in the schemes of violin teacher Shizuka Satomi, the Queen of Hell. Katrina deals with a LOT of transphobia in this book, from misgendering to actual physical violence, and her gender dysphoria is also described pretty graphically. 

I would not consider this an easy read, so please make sure you can handle the content, particularly the transphobia, if you’re going to read it, but this book is absolutely a new favorite for me, and I highly, HIGHLY recommended it.