A Scatter of Light By Malinda Lo

Nicole

4,75/5
Uwielbiam to zakończenie.
Podoba mi się to, że to taka powieść o fragmencie życia. Czymś co się wydaje ważne i trudne gdy się dzieje (bo i wtedy tak jest), ale po czasie może być dla nas tylko wspomnieniem, z którego możemy stworzyć coś pięknego.

Alwynne

A bittersweet story of first love and loss set in rural California in 2013. At first, I thought this slow-burning tale might turn out to be too languid to connect with, but, as it unfolded, I realised the pacing perfectly matched the atmosphere and the setting of a long summer filled with longing. It’s told from the perspective of a Chinese-American woman Aria, who’s looking back at her 18-year-old self, reliving the moment between leaving behind school and her childhood, and moving towards independence. A slut-shaming scandal at Aria’s school has led to a form of exile, now she’s spending the holidays alone with her widowed grandmother. Her grandmother Joan's a prominent painter/photographer, once part of the performance art scene in the 60s, whose work stimulates Aria’s imagination. And it’s at her grandmother’s house that Aria meets Steph, a genderqueer musician, who changes her idea of who she is and what she might become.

This has been billed as a companion novel to Last Night at the Telegraph Club although on the surface they’re vastly different in style and structure. But Aria’s growing connection to the local lesbian community gradually establishes a link. Through Aria’s experiences Lo’s able to explore the changes in California since the Telegraph Club era: the vibrant, public queer scene, and above all the landmark passing of a law enabling gay marriage. Aria still struggles with some of the issues that Lily faced in Lo’s earlier novel, casual racism, confusion over her identity. But she also has access to cultural spaces, ways of being, and networks that barely existed when Lily came of age in the 1950s. Through Aria’s family, Lo also gives us a glimpse of what happened to Lily and to Kath in the years since the end of their story.

Although I have to admit there were stretches of this novel that felt a little too drawn out, I loved the strong sense of place and so many of the small details: the exploration of women’s creativity; the recognition of the influence of Asian-American, lesbian artists like Bernice Bing; Aria’s fascination with astronomy, light and stars. As well as the many, unexpectedly-moving passages. Closer to Lo’s earlier work – it’s a book she’s been trying to write for over ten years – and perhaps not as instantly absorbing or as richly textured as her previous book, but still well worth the time.

Thanks to Netgalley and publisher Hodder & Stoughton for an ARC

Rating: 3.5

booksandzoe

beautifully messy coming into age story about discovering bisexuality through a relationship through somebody older. malinda lo writes the tender messiness of self discovery beautifully; at moments i felt like i was being taken apart from the inside. this one is for the girlies that discovered themselves through their first relationships with somebody they shouldn’t have🥺

Mallory

This is a beautifully written story of a girl caught between past and future coming into herself and her queer identity. Set primarily in 2013 after the Supreme Court found that banning same sex marriages violates equal protection under the law. Aria is 18 and it is the summer between high school and college. She had lots of summer plans which fell apart after a boy took pictures of her without a shirt on and published them on the internet. She is quickly uninvited and her parents feel she needs the supervision of her grandmother for the summer. The first person she meets is Steph, her grandmother’s gardener and she quickly makes friends with Steph and her group of friends who all happen to be queer. Aria is soon. Caught off guard by feelings of a crush on Steph which wouldn’t be a problem if Steph wasn’t in a relationship with another girl in the group Lisa. The summer is full of reflection for Aria. Truly a wonderful story, poetic and full of beauty.

emma

malinda lo has done it again. after last night at the telegraph club i did not think it was possible for me to love a queer novel to the extremes that i loved that one again, but, boy, was i wrong. a scatter of light is a rather worthy successor to the novel that came before it. whilst this may not be a direct continuation from one to the other, thanks to lo’s inclusion of a beautiful snapshot of lily and kath’s five-decade relationship that has been recognised by the united states after gay marriage was legalised in california, the ties between the two are evident.

”everyone was smiling, but none looked as happy as lily and kath, who were gazing at each other rather than the photographer. i zoomed in on lily and kath’s faces, feeling an unexpectedly vivid connection to them both, as if i could sense the love between them glowing like a radiant sun. after so many years, they could show their love to the world at last.”

a scatter of light is a coming-of-age novel centred around aria west, a teenage girl sent to her grandmothers for the summer after topless photos of her go viral on the internet at the hands of a guy. she arrives thinking of the trip as a punishment, wishing for a summer with her friends and cute boys, but leaves at the end of the summer, having spent weeks on end with a group of lesbians close in age led by her grandmother’s gardener steph, broken-hearted and with the confidence that comes after discovering a part of yourself that you never knew could be attributed to you and who you truly are.

this is a story of discovery, a story of owning up to who you are, a story of meeting the one person who as a queer individual changes everything for you. it is a story of heartbreak, a story of your first love that may or may not have been love, and finally, a story many of us will be familiar with.

i know that coming-out stories are nothing new. many argue that we have plenty, especially coming out stories centred around young people. the debate surrounding whether we need more is out there, and so i think that this novel strengthens the case for the need for more. when done right, as exemplified here throughout this novel, there is a sense of understanding. for many of us until it clicks on a random day in a random year, more times than not due to one specific individual that rocks our world and everything you have ever thought about ourselves, we never imagine the possibility that being queer is something that is a part of us. aria goes through this, and lo understands the process. it is a process that often ends in heartbreak, and here it does. this is something we so very rarely see, something that twisted my heart at how aria did everything she could to keep her first love that was not right for her. this may be a love story, but at its heart this is a story of realisation, for us, by one of us, that spares no detail or acts as if one’s coming-out process is easy nor one that ends in happiness with that first romance.

”she tasted like saltwater oysters. i was in love with all of her. i was not myself anymore; i was hers.”

here, lo delivers the next addition of proof that she is, or rather is shaping up to be, the finest author for lesbian, or more broadly, queer fiction.

thank you to netgalley and hodder & stoughton for the arc. it was an honour to read this, and i certainly will be buying a physical copy to treasure. as always, any quotation scattered throughout this review is from the arc i was sent and therefore may not entirely correlate with the final published work.

lisa (lh44's version)

Many regards to Hodder & Stoughton and NetGalley for providing me this eARC in exchange for my honest review.

Alexa, please play "Illitcit Affairs" by Taylor Swift.

A Scatter of Light is a sapphic, coming-of-age story of Aria Tang West, half-Chinese half-White, set at the dawn of Obergefell v. Hodges. Aria, who was supposed to spend a summer with her friends in their villa, found herself being forced to spend her summer at her grandma's place in California. Here, she would embark on a quest of discovery and self-acceptance through a relationship with Joan West's gardener, Steph.

Like
Last Night at the Telegraph Club, this is a book about accepting self's queerness. Set in a very special context,
Malinda Lo brings the readers on the journey to discover the colorful queer culture of 2015 California, where our protagonist, new to the vibrancy and the dynamics of queerness, learned to accept her identity. I also really like
Malinda Lo's social commentary, although sometimes I feel like it could be more implicit. Moreover, the characters, namely Aria, Joan, Steph, were thoroughly developed: they felt pretty much like real people.

As much as the good points go, I cannot give this book more than 3.5/5 because of THAT trope. Normally I wouldn't mind, because it would provide the angst, but in this case I didn't like it at all. Sure, maybe . The other element I wish the author had better developed was the grief. The tragic event happened way too late in the book, as a consequence, Aria's mourning wasn't as thoroughly shown as it should be in my opinion. . However, I think that the ending was highly tasteful for its openness, as it is not a love story with a happy ending.

Overall, I recommend this book if you are open to some unpopular tropes, but I don't think fans of
Last Night at the Telegraph Club will necessarily like this one. Nevertheless,
A Scatter of Light stands on its own as a meaningful coming-of-age story set in a period where queer culture became legitimized in American society, and how a new adult came to terms with her queerness in this particular context.

cel ✼ readwithcel

“all at once i could see who i was becoming as opposed to who i once was. i was split in two: my future and my past. i wanted to remain here on the edge between by two selves, doubly exposed, all hunger and heart.”

halfway through a scatter of light i started reeling, with my only thought being an emphatic “fuck”. this was not what i had expected. then i thought “okay let’s run with it” & now i’m stuck in emotional limbo; cracked wide open.

let me go back. aria tang west knows who she is. after a party goes wrong, she gets exiled to the california bay area to stay with her artist grandmother, joan. there she meets steph, her grandmother’s gardener who shows her a new world of art, people, & the queer community during the first major legalisation of gay marriage. suddenly aria doesn’t quite know who is she or what she wants to be anymore.

a scatter of light is billed as telegraph club’s companion piece but truthfully? it’s strong enough to hold it’s own. its the queer past meets queer present & future, with that connecting thread of something larger than all of us—lily sends her love along a telegraph wire; aria sends her love in a brushstroke.

i feel destined to love this book. so much of it revolves around women’s creativity and lesbian artists. i see myself as a twenty-something retired artist, now as someone who wants to write about art. art is timeless; art is connection. what you create is going to end up affecting people you don’t know & have never met. that’s the beauty of it, isn’t it? that you keep creating & going because you never know who you’ll affect?

circling back, i said this book was unexpected. grief books are my favorite sub-genre & i had not expect this to fall into the category. but it did. a pleasant surprise. it takes the heavy weight of first loves & first loss, of falling in love with someone you never expected to & someone you shouldn’t. then paints it with a brushstroke through through the stars, through the flash of a disposable lens, through yellowed newspaper clippings.

how could i not fall in love?

✼ thank you to PRH international for sending me an arc of a scatter of light in exchange for an honest review

___

initial thoughts:

fuck.

4.5

zara

this isn't a "coming of age" story, it's about a young adult learning how to be a home wrecker and not feel a shred of guilt about it.

jenn

“it was astonishing, and i remember it even today: the realization that the world was not as it seemed. that the stars that appeared to hang motionless above me both moved and did not move, because the earth below me was not actually still. that what i saw might not be reality, but that it was possible to understand it through careful observation, through the instruments that scientists had built to peer into space.”

while writing this review, all i can think is “no thoughts, just tears and anger.” and yet, as i pull a somehow comprehensible review out of my ass, i want you to know that i have never meant that more. i sit here in complete awe of this free-spirited story, because it was so far from what i was expecting, from my telegraph-club shaped vision of 2013 and malinda lo. as i got into it, i let go of anything i knew, and just let this story drive me. let aria make mistakes and fall in love with others and art and life, and talk to me. before i knew it i was sobbing.

let’s rewind. it’s 2013, and aria tang west, resident new-englander, is barred from her planned summer trip to martha’s vineyard with her besties before she goes to MIT in the fall. instead, she’s sent to joan’s house, her artist grandma who lives in marin county of california’s bay area. fog, ocean, wind, art, and a large number of gay weddings given california’s law allowing same sex marriage that just passed. aria tang west, meet steph. joan’s butch gardener steph. enter: the lesbians.

leaving you on that cliffhanger from my riveting retelling, because aria tang west? i didn’t think i’d like her. i can’t explain it, but she’s eighteen and pretty and smart and popular. and then,,, of course. malinda lo knows how to write better than just about anyone. aria is messy and brave and as she meets steph and her friends, as she falls in love with this new world of people and art and dykes, i get her. i think this book doesn’t live in a realm of plot, it just exists. do i think it’s as versatile as telegraph club was? not at all. but that’s so special. it’s about aria and steph and a life-changing summer and joan and her art and aria’s passion for science-y things and being in such a specific, in-between point in your life.

this book is going to be pitched nonstop as a companion novel to last night at the telegraph club. i was promised closure with lily and kath, and that didn’t disappoint, but as much as i loved hearing a similar voice to telegraph club, familiar tones and a sort of parallel action, i think it’s almost stronger to let this book be on it’s own. malinda lo cinematic universe if you will: lily hu on one plane, aria tang west on another, tears and sobs connecting them.

i’m sending love to anyone who needs it right now, because the way this book made me tremble and basically collapse in on myself in sadness and shock driven sobs was humbling. so, i love you. stay safe out there.

thank you penguin teen for an advance readers copy in exchange for an honest review! out october 4.

content warnings: release of nude photos without consent, hospitalization, death of a family member

Madison

I enjoyed this a lot, but it has nothing in common with Telegraph Club.

I will say, as someone who was 20 in 2013, that Malinda Lo gets that part exactly right. the inexorable descent into queer toxicity was cringey and laughable only in that it felt so, so true. Steph and Mel and Lisa feel like people I knew. You can see what's coming from a mile away, and it's so painfully real and accurate to my experience. I loved that aspect.

This book more closely resembles Malinda Lo's foray into contemporary fiction from the mid 2010s, which makes sense because she says in the acknowledgements that that's when this book began percolating. Telegraph Club had a richness of scene, a bigness to it that's totally absent here. A Scatter of Light holds up as contemporary (or, shudder, historical) fiction, but it's not winning the National Book Award. I also thought the connections between Aria and Lily/Kath felt shoehorned and unnecessary, and didn't really add anything to the story, though they make up a huge part of the pre-pub marketing for this book. This book stands up well on its own, so none of that feels needed.

Will teens like this book? Who knows! But I, a 28-year-old, saw my life in it, and I can't wait to talk to my friends about it when it comes out.

Andy

Thank you to Penguin Teen and Netgalley for an eARC in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own.

Wow I cried so much at the end of this.

A Scatter of Light follows Aria Tang West as she is sent out to live with her grandmother for a summer. Aria expects to be bored the whole summer, but then she meets Steph, her grandmother’s gardener. Steph brings Aria into her friend circle (which happens to be a bunch of lesbians) and shows Aria the queer scenes in Cali. Aria then begins to question her sexuality, especially when she can’t get Steph off her mind.

This book is a journey of questioning. Coming into who you are. Figuring who you are after loss. Navigating toxic friendships and forging new stronger bonds. I loved everything about this book. It had it all for me. The last 20% or so had me sobbing the whole way through. This one has small cameos of characters from LNATTC, but it’s not a full on sequel. Aria’s story is her own and it’s one I’m so happy I’ve read.

Toby

I have a lot of thoughts...

First of all: warning. I'm not going to talk about any of the big moments in the book in terms of spoilers, so I'm not marking my review as spoilers -- especially because this is information that *I* personally would have liked to know before reading. That said, if you want everything to be a surprise (especially the capacity in which Lily and Kath's roles are in this book), this is your final MINOR SPOILER WARNING.

I loved, loved, LOVED "Last Night at the Telegraph Club". I read it for my YA literature class, and it quickly became one of my absolute favorite books of the year. When I saw that this book was a companion novel -- one that was specifically marketing itself as a companion novel AND promising in the synopsis that it would continue the story of Lily and Kath I immediately picked it up and started reading.

I am sorely disappointed.

It's not that I wanted it to be a rinse and repeat of "Last Night" and it's not that I was opposed to the idea of new characters with new stories. It's just it WASN'T a companion story. Lily was referenced off hand twice in the main plot of the novel. Finally after NINETY FIVE percent of the book, there was a small news article that Aria read about the two of them that offered insight into what would have much better served as its own novel. Eddie was referenced fairly often, and Aunt Judy was referenced. Every other character was not only not mentioned, but also sorely missed.

I wonder if "A Scatter of Light" was initially supposed to be a companion to "Last Night" or if that was something added in a very late stage. There were many opportunities to have more subtle tie ins (Aria even visits Chinatown with her mother and they talk about Eddie), but there's this very large gap where I keep feeling the promises of tie ins that wind up going unanswered. Not a single character from Last Night at the Telegraph club ever appears in the book. Aria doesn't even interact with any of them aside from listening to mentions of them when referenced.

There was also very little reference to any of the places in "Last Night". No mention to the titular Telegraph Club when discussing Pride in San Francisco or Shirley's family's restaurant when visiting Chinatown. If I had read this without the marketing telling me it was a companion to "Last Night" -- even after having read "Last Night" -- I doubt I would've even realized the two were connected.

Aside from my disappointment on that front, I could have forgiven a lot of it if I at least liked the story... But I just didn't. I didn't like that we were supposed to root for Aria while she was homewrecking, or root for Steph while she was cheating. I didn't like that Aria made fun of Lisa for being worried about Steph cheating when Steph was literally cheating on Lisa WITH Aria.

The worst offender though was that any point where Aria would hear about something bad happening to anyone else -- ANYTHING, no matter how bad -- she would turn it into being about her and Steph. I was infuriated.

I also didn't much like the ending. There's vague endings of course, but this one felt mostly unfinished. Almost every character in the epilogue was new, almost all the information was new (there was no point where Aria seemed to be actually passionate about art until then), and then just like that it was over with a slight nod to the title rather than the actual story.

Malinda Lo is an absolutely phenomenal writer, and I truly think her writing was excellent in the novel. I just didn't (personally) care for the story.

rachel, x

Set in 2013 after the first of the Supreme Court decisions that brought marriage equality to the US. Aria Tang West's story of desire and self-discovery is subtly entwined with a note of closure for Lily and Kath from
Last Night at the Telegraph Club.

an unexpected companion sequel!

Blog •
Trigger Warning Database •
StoryGraph

laurel [the suspected bibliophile]

So, when my eyes read the phrase A companion novel to Last Night at the Telegraph Club, I though that there would be more of a glimpse into Lily and Kath's lives in the early 2010s...but it was really just a glimpse.

Instead, this was a coming of age story of Lily's distant niece, Aria, who was exiled to her grandmother's house outside San Francisco after a really awful event right before graduation. There, Aria meets new friends, and realizes that she's not straight after all. It's both a coming out and coming of age and finding yourself without really and truly finding yourself story, if that makes sense.

I loved the writing, but had both an easy time and a hard time with Aria's voice. She's so...disconnected emotionally from the events she's going through (highly relate) that's she's mostly just going through the motions. There's a lot of telling what she's doing, how she's feeling, and the disconnect doubles when you slowly realize that she's relating this summer through the lens of distance and time, adding another layer of disconnect to the dissociation.

It was...an odd narrative choice to make, to have a first person POV that was so detached from everything around her, and yet it worked.

There's a lot that happens in this book, and several trigger warnings: death of a close relative, cheating, nonconsensual taking and releasing of nude photography.

I think what I wanted in the epilogue was something more concrete, something that showed Aria had connected with herself and bridged the gap between how she'd grown used to bottling everything up inside, tamping her emotions and feelings so far down that not even she felt them anymore. I think that maybe that was what was supposed to do, but I didn't make the connection.

But this is a really good book. It felt real and raw in a way that I haven't felt in a while, reading YA contemporary books, and I think a lot of it is because how hard I related to Aria and her own disconnection to the world, because disassociation is a huge coping mechanism (not recommended, btw).

Anya Smith

Malinda Lo's previous novel, Last Night at the Telegraph Club is one of my favourite LGBTQ+ novels of all time, and A Scatter of Light is now up there beside it.

A Scatter of Light is a tender exploration of sexuality, identity, art, and young love. Malinda Lo captures the raw messiness of teenage years and how nothing is ever simply black or white all within a few hundred pages. She deals with love and loss, happiness and heartbreak, but does so in such a captivating and well-rounded manner - I didn't feel as though the storyline was unfinished, which I often find with other standalone novels. I particularly enjoyed how she presented Steph's gender expression.

One of my favourite aspects of the book was the connection between Aria and her Grandmother, Joan. For the last hundred pages, I was a sobbing wreck - Nina Lacour fans, you'd love this book...

Her writing is captivating, so much so that I read this book in two sittings, not wanting to put it down.

Overall a fantastic YA novel with LGBTQ+ (and Asian) representation. If that's your kind of book, definitely add this to your list.

Thank you to the publisher and to Pride Book Tours for providing me with a copy to review.

Danika at The Lesbrary

This is a book about slowly unfolding self-discovery, the practice of making art, and the beauty of astronomy. It’s about grief and messy first love and different ways of looking at time. It’s a quiet, moving coming of age story that explores complex and difficult emotions–it’s definitely not something that can be distilled easily into a few hashtags.

The motifs of astronomy, time, and art weave effortlessly through this pensive coming of age story. Despite everything going on, this is a quiet story about Aria coming to terms with herself–not just the label of being queer/bisexual/lesbian/other, but with her own emotions. A Scatter of Light captures the tumultuous, heady feeling of teenage first love: how it’s all-consuming, illogical, and often ephemeral while feeling like the most important thing in the world.

If you appreciate introspective, character-driven YA, I can’t recommend this highly enough, whether or not you’ve read Last Night at the Telegraph Club.

Full review at
the Lesbrary.

Lea (drumsofautumn)

the main QUEER romantic storyline of a YA novel involving CHEATING? IN 2022????? SIGH!!! it just sucked all of the joy out of this book for me ngl

Toya (the reading chemist)

Quick thoughts:

I do love messy queers, and this is no exception. Ugh, my heart.

Full review:

I’m an absolute sucker for books that center messy characters especially when it comes to coming of age stories with queer characters, and Malinda Lo absolutely delivers in A Scatter of Light.

This story follows Aria Tang West who is forced to spend her summer with her grandmother (Joan) in San Francisco after nude pics of her surface following the night of her graduation party. All Aria wants is one last summer with her friends before she’s off to MIT in the fall.

Aria is a hot mess but instantly relatable. She starts off so sure of her future and place in the world until she meets Steph Nicols. From that moment on, we see Aria question everything about herself from from exploring her queerness and new labels to her biracial (half Chinese half white) identity to life after high school.

Now I did say this book is messy and that’s because Aria and Steph make all sorts of questionable decisions without always thinking through the consequences. But that’s what makes this so great because it mimics real life. It was so hard not to root for these two no matter what.

And since this is a companion novel to The Last Night at the Telegraph Club, I loved how the author fit Lily and Kath into this storyline and getting an update on their lives.

Thank you Penguin Teen for providing a review copy. This did not influence my review. All opinions are my own.

cossette

3.5 rounded up to a 4, i think

Marie

I NEED MORE CLOSURE WTF THE ENDING

Katy

3.5 stars

A Scatter of Light follows Aria Tang-West, who after her nude photos get leaked at school she gets sent away to spend the summer with her grandmother. Whilst there she learns many life lessons and things about herself, including befriending a local lesbian friendship group and having her first taste of love and desire.

I didn't enjoy this one as much as much as last night at the telegraph club, partly because Lily was such an endearing main character and Aria is kind of bland in comparison and partly because I cannot stand cheating storylines.

Malinda Lo's writing is so gorgeous. It is very descriptive but in a simplistic way that makes you really able to visualise and imagine you are there with the characters experiencing what they are experiencing. It is very compelling to keep reading and is subtly emotionally wrenching - in a way that it sneaks up on you with how much it is making you feel and all of a sudden you are having a breakdown T_T

Once again Malinda Lo manages to capture queer culture in a specific time frame in such a caring and empathetic way. In this book as well she explores more working class queer/lesbian culture which I thought added a lot of depth and interesting themes to the book.

My main gripe with this book was the fact the main relationship was essentially an affair and while I think queer relationships should be allowed to be just as messy as straight relationships I will always hate any sort of cheating storyline (no matter what gender combo it's just not my preference to read about). Some people might really enjoy this kind of drama and angst but for me it just frustrates me because it is a form of miscommunication and I always hate that. I don't think the author was intending to portray a healthy relationship so this isn't a criticism of the book, just a personal preference. I think however this book is an excellent portrayal of that messy first love/sexual awakening/queer awakening experience and how you can't always control who you desire.

I also loved the more modern feminist themes in this book, including how women are often slut shamed for things that are not their fault and forced to bear the consequences for men's actions. Having said I didn't like the main romantic relationship the highlight of this book for me was the friendships Aria had, both with her old friends (I thought this was an excellent portrayal of teenage girl friendships and how they can get messy but ultimately have a huge undercurrent of love) and the new ones she makes in California. I also loved the relationship Aria had with her Grandmother, Joan, who is a famous photographer and helps Aria discover her artistic side. I also thought the portrayal of memory and legacy through Joan's character was beautiful and extremely touching.

In conclusion this is an extremely well written book with a touching coming of age story, however I was slightly let down by the main character and the main relationship. I would still recommend it, especially if you were a fan of last night at the telegraph club as we do get a little glimpse and Lily and Kath's lives during the years gone by :')

Eva B.

I received an arc of this book through a Goodreads giveaway, and that had no impact on my feelings on the book.

An absolutely breathtaking story about coming out and coming into your own. If you're expecting a full-on companion to Last Night at the Telegraph Club, this is not that--it's small cameos, not a full story arc. So many moments had me tearing up and I'm surprised that I didn't cry.

Brigi

Malinda Lo's writing is so good and engaging. I think this could have been so, so great if it hadn't been for the . It didn't have to be there, you know? It really didn't.

Aria and her relationship with her grandmother was great, and how she started doing art again, and discovering her queerness and all those memories of her grandpa teaching her about the stars. It also made me cry at the end with the grandma, so there's that.

Rep: Chinese American queer main character, genderqueer love interest, sapphic side characters

ash

thank you to penguin young readers group for an advanced copy in exchange for an honest review.

last night at the telegraph club was an underlying panic. a worry of being caught for who you are during a time when that was a danger in itself. a scatter of light is a quiet but ever growing hum. a sureness. the increasing acknowledgment that you are something more than you originally thought. and finding a way, someone who you trust, to explore that facet of yourself.

if you asked me to describe this book, i’d have no other way to than by saying it feels quiet. whole. it’s a warming silence that fills my soul with love and hope. while we all know that this book is meant to be a companion to last night at the telegraph club, as i’m sure others have and will continue to mention, it stands incredibly capable as it’s own entity. these two books, in many ways are so opposite of each other, i forget that they essentially accomplish the same goal. it’s a story about a young girl, who learns about her sexuality. it is not a coming out story, but so much more.

it’s aria’s self-discovery that we follow. it’s meeting steph, and mel, and lisa, and experiencing the modern queer arts scene in san fransisco through them. it’s an acknowledgement of decades of queer history and activism in the background, guiding these characters through this 2013 summer. it’s a connection between steph and aria, one that they explore in the serene nature (and pick up trucks) of the northern californian landscape. truly, they have a relationship that, while so much happens, it feels like their time together is so insular. so intense. and i see myself so much in both aria and steph that it hurts a bit and leaves me feeling raw. it all feels so… liminal, in a way.

and, it’s a slow book. it feels like i’m moving as fast as aria did. gradually increasing speed as events and relationships begins to develop. but truly, i will not be able to explain the place in my mind where this book holds strong, adjacent yet opposite to its’ predecessor. i just— i think that’s why it all feels the way it does, a calming force to enrapture my mind. an eternal flame, if you will.

i guess, finally, before i somehow find a way to talk in circles more, i’ll leave with this. this book is so beautifully written that i wrote down so many quotes that resonated with me. but i’ll only share two. two opposite statements, but both ones that set the mature tone we see quite well:

“she might have been kneeling before me, but i was the supplicant”

“i wanted to remain here on the edge between my two selves, double exposed, all hunger and heart”

i hope others resonate with this story and its companion in the way i have. i hope these characters can help other queer teens find the love and acceptance they deserve. to the end of time, you’ll see me shout about these incredible novels.

Vee_Bookish

I pretty much only read this because I was kinda curious to find out what happened to Lily and Kath from Last Night At The Telegraph Club. I knew that they weren't going to feature heavily in this story, but the little detail we got did not make this story worth reading for me.

Aria is a character I could not force myself to like. Inserting herself into an already-established friend group, obsessing over Steph, a girl who was in a fully committed relationship and wrecking that relationship, causing Steph to cheat on her girlfriend just made her kinda nasty.

And even as Steph says at the end of the story, this won't affect Aria much. That summer would be such a minor detail to her in the future and I could see she wasn't looking for a relationship really, it was more of an obsession for her to win Steph, rather than genuinely falling in love with her.

Sophia

honestly, this slapped, slayed, sensationalized — however you’d like to say good. genuinely one of my biggest surprises of the year. highly likely for me to change it to five stars if i still feel the same after sitting on it.

update: i changed it to five stars

this book was absolutely amazing. it may be even better than last night at the telegraph club. i came to appreciate her writing a lot more in this book and established her as an auto-buy author for me.

while reading, i was literally transported to California and forgot that i was back home — mind you, i’ve never been to California. and malinda lo accomplishes something that books don’t usually do for me: i felt everything that aria did. i felt the emotions and the yearning. it was an emotional rollercoaster in the best way.

i was also astonished at the multitude of complex relationships that malinda lo explores. just off the top of my head (and i have a terrible memory), i can think of four complex and well-developed relationships. even with so many relationships, they all felt like unique and refreshing takes on relationships that i often read about.

and while there is a relationship that i’m iffy about, i felt that malinda lo dealt with it so well.

and the cameo from characters from last night at the telegraph club was cute and actually had a purpose and added to the message of both books: the effect of activists on future generations.

in short: i’m obsessed

4.5

haley ⊹

well.. first of all, this should not be branded as a "companion" novel to last night at the telegraph club when the characters from that novel are barely mentioned nor are they relevant to the story here. secondly, I thought every character in this book was boring as all hell. not once did I feel sympathy for them either especially with cheating involved as a plot line. I don't care if it's fictional, if you're trying to get me to feel sorry for people that are willingly cheating and saying it's okay to do so I will be immediately annoyed. it did not come off as a "flawed coming of age story," it came off as the characters being downright annoying and stupid, at least to me. the writing itself is not bad and I love this author a lot but the premise of the story is somehow messy and boring at the same time. grrrr

Kay

This is an emotionally wrenching, bittersweet coming-of-age and coming out story. It is realistic, and intense. It’s not a romance, and it doesn’t have a fairy-tale ending. But it’s a powerful, thoughtful and well-written book, definitely worth a read.

My only quibble was that it went a little heavy on the philosophy-of-life stuff involving astronomy and art. But that might just be my own tastes; other readers might see that as a strength.

SIDE NOTE RE: LAST NIGHT AT THE TELEGRAPH CLUB: A Scatter of Light is billed as a companion or sequel to LNTC, but that is false advertising. We get a wee update on Kath and Lily from LNTC toward the end of the book, in the form of a rather contrived news account. The connection is awkward and forced, and seems like a gimmick to entice readers of LNTC to buy this book. It wasn’t needed; A Scatter of Light stands perfectly well on its own.

clara

A tragically boring chunk of plotless text featuring The Reader’s Award for the Worst Decision. The only reason it gets 2 stars is the artful choice of phrases for the occasional reflective thought or two.

micah ➳ canonicallychaotic

gave me the ick but also made me cry

full rtc

Title	:	A Scatter of Light
Author	:	Malinda Lo
Rating	:
ISBN	:	0525555285
ISBN-10	:	9780525555285
Language	:	English
Format Type	:	Hardcover
Number of Pages	:	325
Publication	:	First published October 4, 2022

A Scatter of Light by Malinda Lo

A Scatter of Light Reviews

A Scatter of Light Reviews

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