Book Review: This Raging Light by Estelle Laure

Ar...when everyone acts like a selfish arse to you.

How is it that you suddenly notice a person? How is it that one day Digby was my best friend's admittedly cute twin brother, and then the next he stole air, gave jitters, twisted my insides up?
Lucille has bigger problems than falling for her best friend's unavailable brother. Her mom has gone, leaving her to look after her sister, Wren. With bills mounting up and appearances to keep, Lucille is raging against her life but holding it together - just.

My gut instinct of this book is a bit of a mess. It's a nice mess, but certain things just don't fit. The best friend Eden becomes really unlikable with very weak reasoning behind her actions. This definitely caused issues as there were main plot points that impact were weaken because of this.

The second part of the book was weak. The set up was okay and understood the attempt to create a boiling point, but I found a hard time buying it. Especially, Eden and Digby's mother's behaviour/thoughts about a perpendicular event was just odd and I thought I had missed something at first because of the way she was acting. Very end was just sappy nonsense that didn't make sense.

The book is told in first person by Lucille and organised by days since when Lucille's mother left, which I really liked and think worked well for the book.

The characters were okay, but I got say the nine year old sister was a bit babyish, especially as she was said to be intelligent. The love interest was as bland as a tree truck but Lucille was sort of bland herself. There's attempt to give depth, almost successfully with the flashbacks but this gave more depth to other characters other than her.

Overall, I give 4 out of fives stars for New Mexican earrings. This book only took me three hours to read and was pretty enjoyable, so despite it failings I would still recommend it. The ending is a bit of a mess I am interested to see what Estelle Laure writes in the future. A very promising debut.

I got this book for review off NetGalley and it is being published by Orchard Books on 14th January 2016.