Synopsis
Three years after running away from home, Olivia is stuck with a dead-end job in nowhere town Chapel Hill, Pennsylvania. At least she has her best friend, Sunflower. Olivia figures she’ll die in Chapel Hill, if not from boredom, then the summer night storm which crashes into town with a mind-bending monster in tow. If Olivia’s going to escape Chapel Hill and someday reconcile with her parents, she’ll need to dodge residents enslaved by the storm’s otherworldly powers and find Sunflower. But as the night strains friendships and reality itself, Olivia suspects the storm, and its monster, may have its eyes on Sunflower and everything she loves.
Including Olivia.
Review
First of all, a big thanks to NetGalley and Titan Books for an ARC of this book!
I went back and forth on ‘A Light Most Hateful’ at first, but the story truly comes into its own as it progresses, growing and mutating into something completely unexpected. I could never have guessed the direction this story goes in; it was a case of strapping in for the ride – twists, turns, corkscrews and all. The power and dangers of imagination is at the heart of the narrative and through Hailey Piper’s writing we most certainly see the power of imagination and the ability to go to places that you never expected to, nor ever should, visit.
The story centres on teenager Olivia and her friendship, and unrequited love, with best friend Sunflower. In many ways it is a classic story of love versus hate. Hate courses through the veins of Chapel Hill. The town’s residents are sick, they are dying, and they want blood, and what persists among the rubble are Olivia, Sunflower, and the bonds that bind them together. Yet despite the love versus hate narrative, Piper’s story is no fairy tale, and you would be naïve to expect the story to play out like one would. The opening to the story is vicious and it is shocking, and the monster to blame is genuinely terrifying. I was torn on how much I enjoyed Piper’s flowery and often hyperbolic descriptive writing throughout the story, but when it worked, Piper managed to create some truly vivid visuals, and there is no better example of this than Lizzie, the monster that stalks Chapel Hill.
The key to ‘A Light Most Hateful’ is in the secrets it holds dear before letting them loose when you least expect them. The story is built on the painful memories of others, on the refusal to move on from the past, on the inability to heal emotional wounds. Repressed trauma can rear its head when you least expect it, and it is often ugly, and the story reflects this volatility, keeping you on your toes about what is to come, but still finding ways to shock you.
Olivia, our eyes, sense of direction and moral code throughout the story, is likable and strong of will, fierce and determined, thoughtful and admirably stubborn. She is a solid protagonist, but really it is her relationships with Christmas (interesting name choice, I know), and with Sunflower, that make her shine. Sunflower makes and breaks the story through her familial relationships with mother and sister, and her friendship with Olivia. A past filled with hurt and abandonment has far-reaching consequences and Piper’s work is a lesson in how pain can spread if the flow is not stemmed. Hate breeds hate and ‘A Light Most Hateful’ is a story tainted by it. You will find it on every page and in every word, seeping between the gaps on the page.
‘Maybe there was no such thing as free will, every action an abstract mess of stained glass formed by colour panes from every experience’.
In spite of this the novel is not a completely pessimistic one. Piper finds the right balance between good and evil, between hope and despair; ‘A Light Most Hateful’ lives in that ominous stretch of greyness that is filled with endless possibilities. In a book that deeply interrogates the morality and existence of a higher power, it is a relief to find an opposition to the futility and darkness expressed: a light, not hateful and vindictive, but free and full of hope.
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