The Only Light Left Burning

By: Erik J. Brown

Narrated by: Andrew Gibson, Barrett Leddy

Length: 12 hrs and 37 mins

Publisher's summary

What If It's Us meets They Both Die at the End in this sequel to the beloved postapocalyptic queer YA adventure romance All That's Left in the World by USA Today bestselling author Erik J. Brown.

Perfect for fans of Adam Silvera, Alex London, and Heartstopper by Alice Oseman.

After a long and treacherous journey south, Andrew and Jamie have finally found safety in the Florida Keys. But they soon learn that safety doesn't always mean happily ever after.

Settling into life in the Islamorada colony with other survivors of the bug, Andrew believes they've finally found themselves a home, even a family. But anxious Jamie is less comfortable in their new community and is eager to return north to keep the promise they made to their friend Henri—to bring her to the colony and reunite her with her daughter. Besides, would it really be so bad to find someplace just for the two of them?

When a hurricane and a shocking betrayal force them to leave the colony in search of new shelter, it brings their tensions to a head—and puts them in the path of some old enemies. Andrew and Jamie must set aside their differences to survive once more and find a new home. But what if "home" means different things to each of them?

©2024 Erik J. Brown (P)2024 HarperCollins Publishers

very torn

just finished in 1 sitting the day it was released. no real spoilers in this review.

TLDR: minor continuity errors, artificial plot, some cute moments, a big cast, some great moments with shock value, a satisfying enough of a end, and at times almost too cringe to listen to due to the author trying to cudgel you with his politics, great voice actors. book 1 > book 2.

so first off, the narration was great. loved these voice actors in the first book and loved them here. however, this book can be very frustrating on a meta level. a lot of the plot is pretty, well, stupid...and one of the main characters even says so. the inter-relatuobship drama plagues the book because a lot of the conflict is artificial, whereas in reality if 2 people sat down like adults and communicated their feelings there'd be no problems, but that would eliminate perhaps 45% of the plot of this book. there are also waaaay too many characters. some of them I didn't even know why they were there or why they're important. a chunk of the book feels like season 4 or 5 of the walking dead, a huge cast of traveling survivors you have to keep track of, and most authors just can't pull off a large cast. on another Meta note, I don't think the author realizes he broke some real-world timelines that messed with the continuity of the books. the author would mention real life events from 2020 and 2021 but kinda established the fact that everything had fallen before or around 2020 in the book. I also don't appreciate the author taking jabs at anyone who isn't liberal by making sweeping assumptions and generalizations. I loved his first book because he was politically ambiguous in that book. Here he spares no time to let you know he's ultra liberal and will prove it by cramming in jabs at anyone who thinks differently politically. it's just intellectually disingenuous and cheap. this almost made me drop the book because I can't take an author who's trying so hard to virtue signal seriously.

the first book was better. there were some great moments here, and the ending was satisfying. there was no payoff in the sexual challenges of the relationship, which I only have a problem with because the author spent a lot of time setting up that narrative point, and it had no payoff. I would've trusted the author to keep it tasteful and appropriate, but nothing really happens.