review: the light fantastic by sarah combs

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April has hyperthymesia, which gives her “flashbulb moments” of events. On the day of her 18th birthday, which coincides with Senior Skip Day, she reflects on her ability as well as all the major events that have happened in the month of April (among others: the assassinations of Abraham Lincoln and Martin Luther King, Jr., the Oklahoma City bombing, and the shootings at Columbine High School and Virginia Tech) while others around the country are plotting yet another devastating event for the month of April. Sarah Combs jumped around in these compelling narratives throughout The Light Fantastic, but failed to bring them together in a truly meaningful way. Despite that failure at the end, Combs expertly crafted incredible profiles of teens experiencing terrible pain because of various memories that haunted each of them. The development of characters who had only a few pages devoted to them was superb.
4/5
Review copy provided by the publisher, Candlewick.