From the get-go, it was obvious this book was a raw and honest portrayal of what it’s like to be cast out from your family and left to survive on your own. For anyone who has been through trauma, who has suffered from complex PTSD, who has been forced to feel ashamed of who they are, this story is for you. And as such, it's important to mention the trigger warnings listed in the back. Parental and religious abuse are rampant throughout, as are depictions of predatory adults and teenage homelessness, as well as talk of the abuse resulting from conversion therapy camps. This book is filled to the brim with heavy topics, but as the title suggests, there is a light at the end of the tunnel. Hope exists despite all of the horror and tragedy, and this book offers a cathartic experience like none other I’ve read.

The pacing and structure of Into the Light consistently drives you toward the answers that you, Manny, and Eli all seek. As each piece of the puzzle slides into place, the overall picture becomes clearer, and I found myself desperate to reach the end. Like any good thriller, this book kept me guessing until the final chapters. And if you’ve heard about that killer twist—trust me when I say it’s worth it.

Into the Light by Mark Oshiro is a gut-wrenchingly difficult book to read at times, but it makes you feel the catharsis of the resolution much more deeply. Oshiro has done a fantastic job of setting you down inside Manny and Eli’s heads and making you feel what it’s like to live their lives, if only for a time. The true tragedy is that these kinds of stories are a reality for many kids all across the United States, and throughout the rest of the world, who have been abandoned and left to fend for themselves. “This book is my attempt to bring these things into the light,” Oshiro writes in the author’s note. “To be honest about a segment of the American experience of Christian nationalism and adoption that some of us know all too well.” If you’re willing to listen, Into the Light has plenty to teach you, and I have no doubt in my mind that this story will stay with you for a long time to come.

I am not okay…

This is an incendiary story that ripped my heart right out. Utterly heartbreaking and so breathtakingly beautiful at the same time.

Religious cultism is one of those things I am equally enthralled by and terrified of! It literally scares the hell out of me but learning about why people fall prey to it is so interesting to me.

I will never fully understand, but maybe that is why I choose to read books like this… There were many things in this book that made me fully enraged, but it was so ridiculously well written. Not everything is perfectly wrapped up and topped with a bow, but there is so much glaring hope in this book.

The pain that is detailed in this book, the despair and longing, the absolute predatory nature of people who prey on the malleable and lost individuals like this makes me sick to my stomach. I bawled my eyes out through this book!

This is one that will give you an uneasy feeling throughout but it’s so incredibly worth it!

This was one of my first eARCs ever and I'm honored to be given a chance by netgallery to get a first look at this book. I'm so use to just reading so many books, but never reviewing it so I am very nervous and excited.

I have had a hard time getting through some books lately, but Into the Light was a change of pace I definitely needed. There was so much happening all at once in the best way possible. I thoroughly enjoyed the book and Mark Oshiro made it very easy to connect to the main character Manny and all the hardships that he goes through as a homeless gay POC. I however did accidentally figure out the plot twist by accident (I won't post any spoilers) which I did doubt myself a bit, until the truth was revealed. The whole metaphor about what happened between Manny & his "family" really did resonate with me and I can not wait to read the next book that's coming out by Mark Oshiro.

“Into the Light” by Mark Oshiro is simply one of the most beautiful and compelling novels I have read. The beginning of the novel wraps its fingers around your throat and pulls you in until the final words. The story is riveting and the connections are authentic. The character of Manny, like so many real individuals like him, will break your heart. The abuse of these children at the hands of conversion camps and those like them is very real and this novel puts all of that reality into perspective. 

Even though the novel is realistic and eye opening, especially if you aren’t familiar with places of this ilk, the fictional story is still hopeful and loving. The twist in the narrative is unexpected and incredible. And that hope is much needed today, given the relevancy of events going on today with LGBTQ teenagers. If you love stories that are relevant, that are beautiful and compelling, I highly recommend this novel. It is an intriguing concept and also a timely story that will open your eyes and give you a fictional character to empathize with when you hear about places like the one in this novel. Maybe, just maybe, it will give hope to young people like the ones in this novel.

This is a beautifully written book that tackles some heavy topics & situations .
A book about an orphaned boy who just keeps going & dosent give up even when most of us would .
A book about finding hope in the most unfortunate situations.
Realizing not all people are bad even though sadly that's your experience & finding family dosent have to be blood .

I felt so many emotions while reading this book . This author really makes you feel like you're with Manny on his journey ultimately to self discovery. Beautiful ❤️

Thank you #Netgalley for this ArC.

I adored Each of Us a Desert the year I read it, so I was very excited to see new work from Mark Oshiro, and wow was this book devastating.

Into the Light mainly follows Manny, a teenager who grew up bouncing around the foster system and is now homeless and trying to find out if the body found in California is his sister. As the story continues we find out more of Manny’s past and we get hints of Eli’s perspective. The book is told in a nonlinear, almost fragmented stream of consciousness style, that is evocative but can also be disorienting. Parts of the story are almost like fever dream as you bounce between Manny and Eli and different time periods and it all comes together in the end, but I did start to find it frustrating even as it made the book compulsively readable. I also think the way it comes together will be divisive.

What Oshiro does best here is unpacking trauma. This book covers so many heavy topics so check the trigger warnings if you need to, but as we follow this story we see the trauma of homelessness and abandonment and parental neglect and religious trauma and conversion therapy and so much more. The way they write these characters and their experiences was so beautiful and heart wrenching that I couldn’t give this book anything less than 4 stars despite not loving the ending. It’s clear that this book is very personal to Oshiro and I can see how it having a book like this out in the world could be super impactful to teenagers.

Into the Light set my blood ablaze. It is an emotionally devastating and painfully honest story that you cannot help but fall totally into.

Mark Oshiro just has it. Their writing never fails to stun me into oblivion and become so deeply emotionally invested.

They deal with heavy topics, so please consider the trigger warnings for this work as it does get extremely intense. However, you can feel the heart, soul and raw emotional vulnerability poured into this work. It thrums with that emotional power I have rarely experienced in any other books.

Anger is a Gift is one of my favourite books of all time. It was devastating, addictive and raw with incredible characterisation. From that, Oshiro became an auto-buy author that I kept firmly on my radar. Into the Light brings that same intensity, exceptional characterisation and compulsive writing and dials everything up to eleven. It forces readers to look at the devastating failures of the adoption system, the horrors of conversion therapy and the impact of religious trauma.

The plot is compulsive reading. Without giving too much away, the way Ohsiro combines narratives in such unexpected and jaw-dropping ways is nothing short of astounding. You think you know where this tale is going, but trust me, you do not. The twists and turns are incredibly unique and genuinely startling. However, they would be nowhere near as effective if Oshiro didn’t make you utterly fall in love with Eli, Carlos and Manny. These are three characters that have been battered by the world around them and yet they continue to survive against all the odds. They have deep flaws and emotional entanglements that endear you to them further. Every queer kid has experienced that same struggle with their identity and a world that wants to squash it, making this representation matter that much more.

Into the Light wipes out everything in its path. I cannot implore you to read it enough.

Into the Light is a book that builds into a frenzy by the end. Oshiro tells an emotional story about family, love, and trauma. It's one that had my heart pounding from the beginning. Whether it was Manny's struggles on the road, the cruelty of people, or his complex relationship with his sister and their foster parents, Into the Light is an emotional tapestry. Into the Light has a core oof family and siblings. The ways we trust people to love us, accept us, see us and all the ways people fail us.

The figures of authority, of religion, of family. But it's also about the people, found family and strangers, who surprise us. And everything in between. People in our life who we love, follow and believe, who still end up hurting us.

***

Into the Light is skillfully written, it was a high **** for me until the middle when I started to find it incredibly repetitive, and unnecessarily drawn out.

I'm surprised this is marketed as YA, as the subject matter is incredibly heavy. The characters are mostly teens, but I can't imagine feeling comfortable reading this as a teen. I greatly appreciate the trigger the warnings. Readers should be made aware, especially when there are this many.

I loved the representation of LGBTQ+ characters and POC. I wish every single white person wasn't a villain, pedophile, or child abuser, but the inclusiveness was really refreshing and great to read. I liked the fiesty characters Carlos and Rakeem. I appreciated and sympathized for Manny and his heart-breaking situation, as he had been through so much. Ultimately, I found him a tad annoying, but really only due to his repetitive inner dialog. Most of the other characters were one-note, or mustache twirling villains, and I found it difficult to connect to any of them.

I almost DNF, but wanted to see what the big reveal would be, and ended up incredibly disappointed. That ending came out of no where, and didn't match the tone that the book spent so long building, almost as if it were an ending for an entirely different book.

The cover is beautiful, and Mark Oshiro's writing is fantastic. I would definitely consider picking up a book from him in the future, and would recommend this to a limited audience who enjoy dark, heavy-themed books.

Thank you to NetGalley and Tor Teen for the e-ARC copy I received in exchange for an honest review.

Into the Light explores the trauma that comes with expulsion from a religious community. I'm fascinated by the central 'miracle' that the book revolves around even when it is hidden - the birth of a heavenly body through trauma, which is supposedly unmarked by sin or evil. It's reflective of the masks that questioning children can be forced to wear in an insular religious community that revolves around a central leader like Oshiro's all-too-familiar televangelist Deacon Thompson. It also touches on the way real children, almost always children of color, are used as props and pawns in these religious communities. That said, this is only the webbing on which the meat of the story lies, and the meat of the story is healing and returning from religious rejection (which so often is complete and total community rejection as well).

The isolation, loneliness, and hopelessness all hit, as well as the fear of making connections only to be exploited again. Manny's perspective is not the only perspective we see of someone harmed by a religious community upheaval, which makes it all the better to sit alongside his particular narrative.

I did not enjoy reading this book. It made me extremely uncomfortable. I'll be honest. I picked this one up because of its cover and its classification as YA LGBT fiction without knowing much about it. I don't think I even read the synopsis. I really should have, and I definitely should have heeded the trigger warnings. This brought up so many memories and emotions about my childhood growing up in a fundamentalist Christian church, and none of them were happy. There was so much spiritual abuse/trauma in this book, and some of the experiences were so accurately described that I had horribly visceral reactions to them.

The writing took some time to like. It was very terse and acerbic while also being stream of consciousness. Once I became accustomed to it, I did like it, though, because it set up the mindset of Manny perfectly. He was secretive, often stuck in his own head, slow to trust, and always on the move. The writing matched his personality perfectly and added an extra dimension to the character building. The story bounced around between three different periods of time, but it was relatively easy to keep track of everything going on. The pace was steady, and I couldn't stop turning the pages to see what clues to Manny's past might be dropped next.

There was a wide range of themes addressed in this book. The horrors of Christian fundamentalism and the damage it can do to children, especially queer children, were front and center. The story also tackled racism, the foster care system, and teen homelessness, and the portrayal was agonizing at times. My heart broke for Manny and all the terrible things he experienced in his young life. Most importantly, though, I was astonished by his perseverance, strength, and unwavering belief in the validity of his sense of self no matter how bad things got for him. Despite being incredibly rough, his journey also highlighted the healing power of connection and the hope provided by finding people who accept you. I loved getting to see Manny slowly open up to his new found family and gradually tear down the walls he built to protect himself after being habitually hurt in the past. It illustrated that no matter how bad things have been there is always the possibility of joy around the corner, as long as you keep yourself open to experiencing it.

I had mixed feelings about the twist. On a symbolic level, the imagery was vivid. It perfectly captured the feeling of being split between wanting so badly to fit in by putting doubts aside to believe what you're told and wanting to just be you and live authentically. This was something I struggled with so much as a teen in the church. More than anything, I wanted to believe like everyone else and be normal. I couldn't because it just wasn't me, and it made me feel horrible and dead inside. This book is the only thing I've ever read that comes anywhere close to describing those complex feelings. However, on a plot level, I hated the twist. It felt like a cop out after waiting so long for an explanation to the mystery. It came out of nowhere and was never really addressed by any of the characters in a meaningful way.

While this was definitely not a fun read by any means, I think it was a profound one. I have no doubt it will quickly be banned everywhere with a conservative majority, which is a shame. It highlighted important and timely themes while providing an emotionally compelling story and a thrilling mystery. I'm glad I read it despite not knowing what I was getting myself into. lol. Therefore, I rate this book 5 out of 5 stars.

This book can be a little intense for anyone who had ever dealt with religious trauma, but it was also filled with moments of joy, love, and laughter. As soon as I thought I had it all figured out, the story took me for a spin and I was left very pleasantly surprised. I think this is a great story for older teens and I know that so many youths and adults alike will be pulled in to this story like I was.

The writing is incredible and the story moves from moment to moment seamlessly, creating a back and forth that will leave you eager to read more and put the pieces together.

I really loved this book and will definitely recommend it. However, this book can be very dark, so please make sure you read the triggers and take care!

Jesus CHRIST. Holy religious trauma batman.

Still. Mark Oshiro is a genius. Mad genius? Maybe. But the structure of their writing is so unique.

(Also I cheered for Manny at the end.)

Thank you to NetGalley and Tor Teen for the eGalley!

KEEP YOUR SECRETS CLOSE TO HOME
Manny is on the run after being kicked out of his religious adoptive parents house and put into reconciliation alongside his sister Elena, after he was constantly disappearing at night to go and meet up with a boy he happened to fall in love with. Manny has never believed in god and thinks that god has nothing to do with him. But luckily for him he managed to escape, now a dead body has turned up in the woods and Manny wonders if the body could possibly belong to his sister who he hasn’t seen in quite some time. Now homeless Manny quickly finds himself in the care of the Vareleas and their cute son Carlos, but after some time with them Manny decides to run away and asks for a ride from a truck driver who agrees to drive him for a while on his road trip in search for answers to the identity of the missing body. Manny knows he should not trust everyone but his consciousness can sometimes lead him into tricky situations but Manny always finds a way out of them using his intelligence, as Manny continues his journey the people taking care of him keep changing and before Manny knows it he is back in the care of the Varela family and once Manny explains the reason for his running away they are more than willing to do whatever it takes for him to find his sister. In Manny's journey he will make a shocking discovery that could change everything.

There is a lot to love about this book I love when you can can get the vibe and atmosphere of a book from the first page and this is a book that will give you all the feels and by the ending you will be utterly shattered, but Mark has also written something very dark and personal to themself that many other adopted teens or adults may recognize. Although you might be confused at first it is for all the right reasons. Readers should definitely take care whilst reading this book as there are plenty of dark themes within that some might find triggering. In my honest opinion this book comes highly recommended and will spark plenty of discussions and just for having the courage to write this book Mark deserves any praise they can get.

Into the Light is an achingly beautiful story that’s incredibly heart-wrenching yet still hopeful for the future. It’s raw and emotional, it will fill you with rage and overflow you with love at the same time. It doesn’t shy away from making you feel a vast range of emotions, and it shouldn’t. It gently sinks it’s teeth into you, getting deeper the longer you read, but it’s so slow and built up that you don’t realize until the end how much it’s changed you. How much it’s embedded in you, now. This book is something special and every time I picked it up, I couldn’t put it down. The deep ache it left in me once I finished it still exists, albeit softer, like water gently lapping at my feet. I can feel it just so, knowing it’s always there. This book really is important to me and I can’t wait to reread it for years to come.

Before I get into my review I want to say please check trigger/content warnings before reading this book.

Y'all. I loved this book.

I am not normally one to read a book with religious trauma/context, but it was done *so well*. It made me cringe 98% of the time, but like in a good way, because it was so relatable. The story was so well written and I was drawn in from the first chapter.

If you are looking for a book with a bit of mystery, trauma, and a hell of a plot twist - look no further.

Thank you so much to NetGalley and TorTeen for giving me the opportunity to read this book early! I absolutely adored this book—I found myself taking any free moments today to read just a few more pages. It was utterly unputdownable. The propulsive pacing and the mysterious, winding narrative kept me hooked the entire way through. This book opens with Manny an already incredibly damaged young man who only thinks about how to survive the day, without any further purpose. We know that he has fled a horrible situation, but we don’t know exactly how horrible or insidious. Manny has been traveling with a family—the Varelas—who really seem too good to be true at first. Honestly, I was waiting for the other shoe to drop, the exact same way Manny was, and I felt the same kind of utter relief he did when the Varelas really were trying to help him and offering him a better future. Sometimes when reading books that center around a character with so much baggage and trauma, the story can get bogged down by the constant self-deprecating, but that did not happen here. Manny is aware of his trauma and while he shies away from it (and his past), he deals with it and shows just how resilient he is. (And that’s not to say that every child who has faced what he has *has* to be as strong or resilient as he is—actually the opposite is true). As readers, we are pulled along this fast-paced ride through Manny’s history and insecurities until the surprising climax at the end. I don’t know what I was expecting when the twist was revealed, but it was incredibly interesting. Everyone at the religious compound thought that Eli was who Manny was always meant to be, and so couldn’t reconcile that idea of ‘perfection’ with Manny or when Eli began to remember where he came from. Manny was always meant to be Manny. In the end, all Manny wanted was agency—the ability to make choices for himself, rather than being shuttled around between foster homes or following his sister in her choices so they don’t get separated. But this story begs the question: if you can’t make choices for yourself—if you lose your agency, do you lose small parts of yourself, your identity, as well?
This book deals with some intense themes such as religious and adoption trauma, as well as the cruel reality many homeless teens face. There were also present some more insidious imageries present in this book as well, particularly the fact that all the ‘parents’ at the religious compound were white while their ‘children’ were queer and non-white. This is a particularly sinister, yet subtle, aspect included in this book (as it is only mentioned a few times) as it is certainly a commentary on the intended erasure of these kids’ identities.
Nevertheless, this book leaves readers with some hope in the end, as Manny finds a potential new family who has seen all that he truly is and accepts him, and as he forms a plan to help other kids like him. I loved this book.

An engaging and interesting take on cult life; surviving it, life after it, getting hooked in, and life on the inside. The lgbtq+ aspect was good as well. The twist was unexpected and didn't fit to me. I was expecting assault rather than sci-fi horror for the climax/twist moment in the story. Kinda killed it for me.

Thanks so much to NetGalley for this ARC!

3.5/5 stars

I had to take some time and process this one - it has an exhaustive list of trigger warnings and deals with some extremally heavy topics and I needed time to make sure I wasn't just gut reacting, either giving it a higher rating to support what I believe the intent was or a lower rating because it was uncomfortable.

In the end I can't say I loved it, completely outside how important I think stories like this are. It was an unexpected blend of magical realism (I think? I'm honestly still a bit unclear) and therapeutic/traumatic realism. It discusses extremely important yet under-realized topics like religious trauma, child abuse/neglect/sexual assault, foster care/adoption, child death/murder, homophobia/conversion camps, racism....but the author keeps the reader in the dark by deliberately withholding the timing of the 2 POVs and mixing up the trauma of a child with a completely unexplained "miracle". I struggle to describe it without spoilers, though I'm honestly not sure I could even with them.

In the end, I think this is an incredibly important story but the execution wasn't for me - I don't mind being confused if the writing is well done and the author brings it to a satisfying ending - that, I think, is what was missing for me here. I didn't truly feel satisfied with the ending and it felt rushed and too unrefined - I spent more time confused and saying "well this already odd book just got super weird" than I did really feeling the impact of the story, which in my opinion took away from the power of the book.

I would still recommend this book, but only to people I know very well and would trust could handle the subject matter.

Full of emotion and angst this book is definitely a tearjerker. I flew right through this beautifully written book. A view into the life of a queer latinx teen, this was such a page turner and impossible to put down.