I had a difficult time getting into this story but maybe it's because during the pandemic I have had a hard time focusing on any story. But then all of a sudden I was enveloped in the lives of these characters and in true Zentner fashion the tears came to my eyes in all the right moments. This is a story about discovering who you are and what can heal us. Zentner takes us from Tennessee to a boarding school in Connecticut, where his two main characters are forced to confront their past, and take risks in the hopes of living something better.

Living in a small Appalachian town is anything but easy for Cash, especially considering his family circumstances. With his best friend Delaney by his side, Cash's small world is at least bearable. Will a life changing opportunity give Cash and Delaney a future?

Part of the story is a little too leading, with plot points that are obviously there for character movement. The author does a great job of setting the characters into a world that is realistic for so many in the poorer areas of the United States. Cash's experiences are not all that unique, but his voice comes through clearly. Jeff Zentner has a way of writing teenage male characters with depth, who have thoughts and feelings about more than just the obvious. Overall, In the Wild Light is not as good as The Serpent King, but is definitely a worthwhile read.

Disclaimer: I was given an Advanced Reader's Copy of In the Wild Light by NetGalley and the publisher, Crown Books for Young Readers. The decision to review this book was entirely my own.

Grandparent stories always get to me because I still miss mine so much. So, it was no shock to me as the tears came reading about Papaw and Mamaw. You can't help but love the grandparents in this story of love, loss, adventure, and poetry. The love story of Delaney and Cash is one of discovery and understanding as they deal with their past, present, and future. Trying to figure out just how to move forward. A beautifully crafted story that I couldn't put down from the moment I started.

Jeff Zentner delivers another powerful book about a couple of teens that touches the heart both with joy and with grief. And ultimately with hope.

I love Jeff Zentner’s writing. It’s very descriptive without being too flowery. For some reason this story just fell a little but short for me. I haven’t been able to enjoy a story from this Author like I enjoyed his first book, The Serpent King. This one just didn’t give me all the feels like that book did.

This book was so wholesome and happy while also being incredibly tragic. I loved all the characters so much and I thought the author did a fantastic job of showing Cash's coming of age.

"You are not a creature of grief. You are not a congregation of wounds. You are not the sum of your losses. Your skin is not your scars. Your life is yours, and it can be new and wondrous. Remember that."
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Fam. I'm here tears are streaming in rivers down my face. I'm thinking about the grief and hope I found in In the Wild Light. I'm completely in awe of this book. I've been sitting here with it for a while now. Letting its words carve into my heart like a river cuts into the land, letting them find a permanent home. Holding onto these feeling of sadness and shining bright hope. Looking at the trees who have just recently become green again to remind us that "beautiful things continue on." Thinking of Cash and Delaney, of Papaw and Mamaw, of Vi and Alex, of all the love found there between them. The true, deep, vibrant hope and healing they are finding.

Jeff Zentner changed my life with the Serpent King 5 years ago, and I already know this book has changed me. I didn't know how deeply I needed to grieve with Cash. I've felt something like Cash's grief, as many of us have, and I didn't realize how deeply my heart needed to wrestle with that pain again. To be broken again by it, but also to find the hope and healing that Cash's story gives. I didn't realize how much I needed this wild light of hope until I found it. Jeff, I cannot thank you enough for your words, the heart you poor into each of them, and your vulnerability and willingness to gift them to us.

I have to preface this by saying that I am a HUGE Jeff Zenter fan. Each one of his books is better than the next and I really think he went all out with In the Wild Light.

This is a beautiful book. Thats one of the things I've come to expect, appreciate and love of Zenter's books. He turns the oridinary into the extradoridinary. Its a rare talent I don't think any other author that I know has come close too.

Oh Cash, Cash, Cash, how wonderful of a character you are. I would love to know you in real life. You're heart is just full of so love.

This is what Zenter's talent is. He makes you fall in love with the character and dare I say, he takes you so much into the character that you almost become a part of the character.
This book will make you cry, make you smile and make you feel!

Thank you so much to #NetGalley and Crown Books for Young Readers

I read this in preparation for Jeff coming on Lit Service Podcast. It is beautifully written and cuts deep. The sentiment behind the writing of poetry is one I'll be thinking about for a while. Loved it!

This book was not meant to be a book of poetry. It has poems in it, but just a few. What this book is meant to be is a story of love. Love of the land that you were born upon, of home, family, friends, mentors...everything. It is sad at times and funny as well. (He is the Master of Banter after all) SO yeah, it is meant to be a love story of sorts. What is however, is poetry. Words and phrases strung together to make you sigh and stare off into space-that kind of poetry. Read it. Jeff Zentner is doing what he is meant to do. He has reached the top of his game.

This was such an achingly beautiful, sorrowful book with two protagonists, who are each other’s best friends and support group and their first year at a prep school. Jeff Zentner’s writing is always so full of soul, deep yearning, and powerful messages. Through Cash, the beauty of Sawyer, Tennessee is found in the water, the land, Papaw and Mamaw. With parents addicted to drugs, Delaney and Cash met each other at a meeting and a forever friendship begins and is cemented over the years. Cash despairs as his beloved Papaw is struggling with emphysema, and he must decide if he will attend Middleton Academy with Delaney. Cash is such a good, good person and his love for his grandparents, Delaney, and his Middleton friends is deep, devoted, and courageous. Readers will love Cash’s sincerity, fear of failure, despair, grief, and his whole persona as he looks back on his life with a drug addicted mother, his deep insecurities, his profound love of Mamaw and Papaw, and struggles daily in his new life at Middleton Prep with his crush, his friendship with Alex Pak, taking up crew and writing poetry, and always worrying about Delaney. This is a must read and the mentions that harken back to each of Zentner’s other books made my heart pound with so much love. Highly recommended!

YA is usually not my genre, but I heard such great things about Mr. Zetner. I was not disappointed! This brought me back to my late teen years in the best way possible. What a beautiful story. Highly recommend!

Thanks to NetGalley and Random House for an advance copy of this to review! This is one of my most anticipated releases of the year and I'm happy to say that it lived up to the hype. Like, I already want to read this again if I knew it wasn't going to emotionally devastate me. I'm going to do my best to put my feelings into words!

Jeff Zentner has a way of writing grief that just melts from the page. That's something that connects each book that he's written, all of which I highly recommend. This book is no different. At its core, this is a book about grief; about how we work through it, how we move forward. How we let friends and family help us through it. And how we take hold of opportunities handed to us.

One of the things that Zentner added to this book was poetry. Cash is on a journey learning how poetry and art is important in life (and his teacher is the best. She's one of my favorite characters). The poetry included in the book fits so well with the characters and the story. It feels effortless. Zentner's prose feels like poetry at times, and it really just shines in this book.

And the characters! You'll fall in love with Cash right from the beginning. Delaney, too. The friends they meet at school, Alex and Vi, are also so well-rounded. Their little squad is beautiful and ever teenager deserves a squad like that. Cash might be a little oblivious at times, but you'll be rooting for him throughout the whole book.

Like always, there are nods to Zentner's other books in here, too. I won't spoil them, but I love these little nods. You have all summer to catch up before this book comes out, so do it now!

All in all, this book will put you through an emotional ringer, but it is so worth it. I can't wait to do a quote round up for it when it comes out in August!

In the Wild Light is a realistic fiction novel about Cash and Delaney, two teens growing up in a dying small town in Tennessee. When offered a chance to attend a prep school in Connecticut, Cash has a hard decision to make: stay home in Sawyer to care for his ailing grandparents or attend Middleford Academy with Delaney, who won’t go without him. Encouraged by his Papaw, who is dying from emphysema, Cash accepts the scholarship and learns how to deal with the hardships he has endured by writing about it in a poetry class. This story of family, love, loss, and friendship is sure to be another best seller for the author. This is his fourth book and they are all great. Add it to your TBR list and your fall purchase order for the library.

“I was afraid that being a man meant waging war on what was beautiful.”

How a book can make you feel like you’re 17 and you’re exactly 40 at the same time is beyond my comprehension. But that is the fact of how Jeff Zentner’s new novel, In the Wild Light, impacted me--it was the book that came into my life on exactly the right day at exactly the right time. A book about finding yourself, disappointing others, watching a family member struggle with illness, processing death at far too early an age, rewriting the narrative you always believed was your future...

It’s rare to find an author who can write about poor, rural kids. Really--that demographic is so underrepresented in literature, and when we are lucky enough to find books about this demographic, it seems the kids are inevitably stereotyped into all the myths we think of when we think of rural education--hillbillies who are unmotivated by anything other than football or trucks.

Yet, Zentner has proven again that he is capable of bringing young people to life in the pages of his books that are whole, empathetic, kind, believable, gentle, hopeful. Teenage characters who will haunt you forever (Travis….if you know, you know) and will make your heart soar (Rayne...Dill...) and, in his newest work, will remind you that being seen is all that most students actually want and need in this world.

This is a book of friendship, family, masculinity, education...it’s a book of wounds and heartbreak, scar tissue that threatens to strangle and poetry that reminds us we are bleeding souls only looking for a space that allows us to be the beautiful, messy and horrifying people we are.

I cannot say enough about this book, and I know my words fall short, but I can implore you to pre-order multiple copies for your classroom library, and prepare to lose many because this is a book kids will steal, will tattoo onto their skin and will clutch to their chests.

Thank you, Jeff Zentner, for reminding this lost English teacher that we all find home eventually, that wounds do heal, that education alters paths, that rivers lead to truth, and that writing is a balm we often forget to share with ourselves in the way we share it with our students.

Once again, Jeff Zentner doesn't disappoint. This was my fourth Zentner book and I think it gives The Serpent Kind a run for its money (I've loved them all but The Serpent King is the one I recommend the most, and the one that still stings a little. Okay, it stings a lot.).

Into the Wild Light follows Cash's journey through small town life with his grandparents to an elite boarding school, all while dealing with tough decisions, a lot of heavy feelings, and some complicated friendships. I highly recommend all of this author's Young Adult fiction. The writing style is beautiful and you'll feel like you're right there in small town America with the characters.

Thank you to netgalley for providing an e-galley in exchange for my honest review. This book hits like a punch in the gut. This examines love in all it's many ways. Cash is raised by his grandparents after his mother OD's in their trailer, but instead of blaming her, his grandparents and Cash still love their memories of her and the good in her, which is so refreshingly different from most of the other books that have been written about this topic. Cash's best friend Delany makes a groundbreaking scientific discovery and wins them both a scholarship to a prestigious boarding school in Connecticut, thousands of miles away from their home in Tennessee. Cash and Delaney go and discover there's more to life than their small town and those small minds residing in it, but they can always go back to try to make things better. This is a pretty involved novel, traveling from Connecticut to Tennessee, covering two school years, but I feel like it's more accessible than some of Zentner's other novels. The poetry aspect was a surprise, since it was Cash's character who connected to it. I really enjoyed the connections to Rayne and Deliliah's Midnite Matinee too.

A true powerhouse of a novel, this is achingly beautiful and poignant. It explores the different facets of families and the relationships we have with the people we love. The pace is slow and deliberate. It's a story of a boy who goes through so much (mom's overdose, his relationship with his grandfather, etc). Zentner takes the average and almost mundane and turns it into something extraordinary, and worth exploring. A must in any collection.

This book was absolutely phenomenal. It filled my soul in the way only a certain kind of 5-star book can. The East Tennessee setting absolutely came to life and I felt like Cash's family members were my own, I cared about them so deeply. This book is full of heartbreak but also beauty, and I truly loved reading Cash's journey to becoming the person of courage his family and friends always knew he was. I cannot recommend this book enough.

"I don’t know how to live under the sun of a God whose harvest is everyone I love."
How does Jeff Zentner do this? Truly, a wizard of writing. I have devoured all of his books (go read those now if you haven't) and In the Wild Light is no different. So, so, moving and beautiful.
In Sawyer, Tennessee Cash Pruitt and his best friend Delaney are outcasts. His mother dead from her opioid addiction, and Delaney keeping hers alive with Narcan. So when Delaney discovers a new form of penicillin in a cave, she gets accepted to the most prestigious boarding school in the country, and stipulates she will only go if Cash comes too. So begins their new life in Connecticut, with Cash pining for the days with his PawPaw, dying of emphysema back home. Cash and Delaney try to escape their life back home, but find it impossible.
Truly an amazing story that is so heart-wrenching if you are anything like me, you will find yourself resolved to a puddle of tears on the ground. A million stars.