Picture Us In The Light
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5.0 • 6 Ratings
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- $7.99
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- $7.99
Publisher Description
"Picture me madly in love with this moving, tender, unapologetically honest book." —Becky Albertalli, #1 best-selling author of Simon Vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda
Danny Cheng has always known his parents have secrets. But when he discovers a taped-up box in his father's closet filled with old letters and a file on a powerful Bay Area family, he realizes there's much more to his family's past than he ever imagined.
Danny has been an artist for as long as he can remember and it seems his path is set, with a scholarship to RISD and his family's blessing to pursue the career he's always dreamed of. Still, contemplating a future without his best friend, Harry Wong, by his side makes Danny feel a panic he can barely put into words. Harry's and Danny's lives are deeply intertwined and as they approach the one-year anniversary of a tragedy that shook their friend group to its core, Danny can't stop asking himself if Harry is truly in love with his girlfriend, Regina Chan.
When Danny digs deeper into his parents' past, he uncovers a secret that disturbs the foundations of his family history and the carefully constructed facade his parents have maintained begins to crumble. With everything he loves in danger of being stripped away, Danny must face the ghosts of the past in order to build a future that belongs to him in this complex, lyrical novel.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
It's easy to pigeonhole books: this one's an immigrant story, this will appeal to readers who have lost someone to suicide, here's a doomed love story, and so on. Gilbert (Conviction) includes all these elements and more in this novel, masterfully negotiating plot twists and revelations while keeping the focus on her characters. Danny Cheng is an artist and one of the least wealthy kids at Silicon Valley High School; when he gets a full scholarship to RISD, he pictures his "whole life radiating like a sunbeam out from this one point." But the sunbeam is shadowed by the guilt and grief that Danny, his best friend Harry, and Harry's girlfriend feel about their friend Sandra's death, and it fades entirely when his father's job loss forces the family to move. The move dredges up secrets that Danny's Chinese immigrant parents have been keeping and even threatens his college future. And the love story? It's there too, in the interstices, another secret that Gilbert handles subtly and surprisingly. Ages 14 up.
Customer Reviews
A true coming of age book
This book really hit different in my heart, and I’m not completely sure why, the mix of the amazing character development, the twist and turns the characters face, everything comes together so nicely and produces one of the best books I’ve read. I would definetely recommend this book to anyone, really.