Book Review: Midnight Sun by Trish Cook

Hey Guys!

Can you believe that it is nearly the end of 2018?!? It doesn’t seem at all possible. And it also doesn’t seem possible that it is time for my final book review of 2018, but here we are. we are closing this year out with Midnight Sun by Trish Cook. So, let’s do this final review!

I can 100% see why this book gets such mixed and poor reviews. It isn’t the best. It really isn’t the best. there is a lot about this book that I didn’t like but then at the same time some elements made me smile. I think overall however, the bad far outweighs the good with this one.

For starters lets ignore the medical side of this book (I’ll get to that in a minute) and focus on the romance side of it. There are a lot of things about it that I don’t like and don’t approve off. to start with, it is very insta-lovey. Katie and Charlie go from strangers to completely in love in a single chapter. It just is not at all realist or relatable. In fact, it is pretty annoying. There is also the elements of withholding of information between the pair. Katie doesn’t tell him anything of any significance. She withholds from him information that he is entitled to know and what she does choose to tell him she only tells him half the story. I also didn’t like the fact that she basically low-key stalked him for 12 years. And similarly his responses to some of these things felt completely false and unrealistic. Their entire relationship felt like it was built on half-truths and deceptions. I just found it very problematic.

And then if we flip it and ignore the relationship side of the story and focus purely on the medical side, that wasn’t particularly well done either. I can 100% see why people say that Midnight Sun is the poor man’s Everything, Everything. This book just didn’t do it well. Instead of the illness in it being the story it felt like it was just being used as cheap plot point to complicate the romance. It wasn’t explored very well at all, in fact there isn’t actually that much spoken about it in the book, besides what has to be said. I also found that some of the elements of it seemed a bit sketchy. I did some research into XP while reading this book and I found that some of the elements in the book don’t actually seem to line up with the facts. Meaning that this book didn’t feel like it was giving an accurate portrayal of the illness at all.

This book had the potential to be incredible. It had moments that made me smile and some funny moments, but it ultimately let itself down. It could have given books like Everything, Everything and The Fault In Our Stars a run for their money if it had been done right, but it just wasn’t. it ended up being neither a good romance story nor a good portrayal of XP. I am however curious about the Japanese film that it is based off, hopefully that is a better portrayal…

1 out of 5

And there we go. ending the year on a slightly sour note. Oh well. have you read Midnight Sun? What did you think about it? I hope that you have enjoyed todays post and I will see you all in 2019!