All That’s Bright and Gone (ARC Review)

What’s the deal with cover designs featuring night skies and stars lately? 

To be fair, the cover of All That’s Bright and Gone actually has fireworks on it, and it does tie into the plot. But still. It’s so generic compared to what’s within, which is a rollercoaster ride of mystery, told from the perspective of 6-year-old Aoife.

Aoife knows her brother is gone, and I guess she knows he’s been murdered because Hannah from next door told her so, and she’s always playing detective (plus, she’s eight). Mama knows Theo is gone too, but sometimes, like now, she gets confused. It’s up to Aoife to figure out who killed Theo and make things right so Mama can come home. The only problem is, no one wants to talk about him. Lucky for Aoife she has Teddy, her friend (and bear), to help her figure things out. Even if all the grown-ups say he’s imaginary, Aoife knows he’s real.

All I had to hear about this story was “6-year-old narrator” and “imaginary friend” and I requested it immediately. Then I settled in for some twisted and possibly very strange stuff. 

It sure was delivered.

What’s fantastic about this book is the way the narration allows us as readers to get both sides of the story; we understand more than Aoife about what the grown-ups are telling her, getting all the hints at what they don’t want to say, but also Aoife’s thinking, her memories, and what she sees when the adults aren’t watching. It always seems like we, as readers, are getting the most information, and so we’re always on the verge of discovery, always on the edge of figuring out what happened. 

And yet…we’re not. 

This, mixed with the perfect pacing and the natural tension caused by wondering what the heck happened to Theo, drives this story forward, making it an absolute page-turner. I couldn’t put it down. I raced toward the reveal, that moment in a book like this that can either make or break the rest of the story.

And then, when we finally do figure out what happened, it was nothing I expected. 

It’s a rare and beautiful (yet highly sought-after) moment in mystery novels where the reveal is actually, well, a reveal, and not something we saw coming, but also makes total sense. Where suddenly all the clues become so clear, so much so that you want to start back from the beginning and see all the genius foreshadowing that I couldn’t piece together before. 

This book had one of those moments. 

I also admired how mental health was addressed here. Mysteries and thrillers often incorporate mental illness as an explanation or a plot device. I’ve read too many stories where trauma is caused to someone (often a young and innocent character) by a person (often a mother) who has an out-of-control mental health issue. These characters are too commonly portrayed as being one and the same as their disease and vilified. Their terrible actions are blamed on their poor mental health and lack of treatment, end of story. 

If you think about it for a moment, I’m sure you’ll be able to think of at least one example.

But here, we see characters struggling with mental illness (which is never specifically categorized, an aspect I liked) but portrayed, still, as people who have their good days and their bad days; who are doing their best to cope with something that is trying to take over and ruin their life and don’t always have the means or funds to stave it off. Characters with mental illness here are misunderstood by others (as is, unfortunately, realistic) and could have easily been made into villains, but were not. And I applaud that. 

Next, maybe we can have a mystery that…doesn’t need mental illness as an explanation for events?? 

No? Ok. 

…Maybe in a century or so.

There is also a magical realism element to this story that some readers may not like but that I really enjoyed. It’s not clear going into the story that it will be included, but I loved that it allowed some things to be left in question, open-ended, while everything else was coming to a close and being solved. I thought it also worked really well with the fact that Aoife is a 6-year-old girl with a wild imagination. I think it will definitely be a great source of discussion amongst readers (book-clubs rejoice).

My only true complaint was that I found the inclusion of the letters somewhat confusing. They came in a bit too late in my opinion, and so were somewhat jarring. I wasn’t sure at first whether they were from the past, present, or future. I can see why they were included, but also think that a majority of the information in them was unnecessary. I like the idea but think it would have been better to incorporate them more throughout so that they felt more cohesive with Aoife’s chapters. 

I rated All That’s Bright and Gone  4.5 out of 5 stars. I would highly recommend it, especially to those who enjoyed the narrative style of Room.

Thank you to Netgalley and Crooked Lane Books for the opportunity to read an advanced copy in exchange for an honest review.