The Light Stays On

The Light Stays On by Karen Jasper

I received the ARC of this book from a friend who asked that I read and review it. Because this is a new author I had the pleasure of going into this read with no preconceptions with regard to her writing. Although the plot line has a great deal of potential, the writing does not live up to that potential. Instead of improving as the story develops, the dialogue becomes more stilted and difficult to take seriously, the writing more inconsistent and the characterizations less and less believable. In addition, many readers may have some difficulty with the authors habit of switching back and forth between the past and present narrative in the second half of the book. Although I had high hopes for this book, particularly in light of the glowing reviews it received from previous readers I simply was not able to suspend my disbelief in either the characters, their behavior or the situation. Hopefully this author will continue with her writing as I believe she WILL continue to improve with further effort and I look forward to reading them.

On a more personal note, and this shouldn’t have any bearing on my review so I left it out of my Amazon and Librarything reviews, this book exemplifies what I am beginning to think is the downside to lesbian fiction. The “coming out-tortured straight girl-come hither-begone-dreadful breakup-fantasy comes true-tragic yet uplifting end” genre. It really sort of takes every lesbian steretype, deserved and undeserved, and in a manner of speaking it bakes it into one big steaming cliche. Which frustrates me no end. I intensely disliked the main character and the way she treated a a more tertiary character. There was an attempt to assign some very noble feelings to the character of Lily as they applied to this character, but the truth is, she used her, dumped her and forgot about her in the process of seeing her cliched lesbian fantasy fulfilled. I realize this is fiction, but this is getting as tiresome as the “drunken, drug and sex abusing drag queen/gay boy” stories. Shouldn’t our own culture acknowledge there is more to most of us than this? Or is this what most people want to read about us, gay and straight? Argghhh!