REVIEW: "Fade Into the Bright" by Jessica Koosed Etting & Alyssa Embree Schwartz
Lots of people experience trepidation about visiting the doctor. Maybe they’re loathe to be poked and prodded, or they’re uneager to step on that truly unforgiving scale, or they’re worried that their doctor won’t approve of their one-glass-a-day wine habit.
It’s not that the above-mentioned factors don’t give me pause, but I don’t mind them as much as I mind something about which most people probably never even think: filling out the forms.
My nervousness about completing this particular piece of paperwork is owing to the fact that I know for certain that some of the information they are requesting I will not be able to provide. Specifically, a family history from my father’s side.
Given my perpetual eagerness to ace any and all tests, it causes me physical pain to leave literally 50% of the family history section blank. In recent years, I’ve taken to drawing a big, deliberate X over the section, hoping that it will communicate that I haven’t left it blank in error but, instead, out of necessity.
Because I have no answers to provide.
I don’t know if my father has had a heart attack or if my paternal grandmother had breast cancer or if I have an aunt or uncle on my father’s side who has been impacted by dementia.
In truth, I barely know my father’s name.
As I’ve gotten older, my inability to provide this information has started to bother me more, because it seems like the answers are increasingly important. It feels as if I’m getting closer and closer to experiencing the concerning conditions about which they are querying.
In my youth, I felt vibrant and healthy and invincible.
I share this, along with my status of fatherlessness, with the protagonist of Fade into the Bright. Unfortunately for this protagonist, Abby, though, her period of perceived invincibility is cut unfairly short when she receives a letter from her previously distant father.
Rationally, anyone might feel a little less than thrilled to hear from a father who electively abandoned the family more than 10 years prior, but Abby and her sister, Brooke, have even more reason to be upset. Namely, the content of the unexpected correspondence. The letter is light on pleasantries and heavy on disappointing news.
In this out-of-the-blue letter, their father communicates to his daughters that he has Huntington’s Disease, a devastating, fatal genetic disorder. Even more upsetting, because he has the condition, Abby and Brooke each have a 50% chance of having it as well.
Unhappy with all options at their disposal, the pair decides to undergo testing to find out whether they, each, are gene-positive for the disease. When Abby finds out that she does, in fact, carry the mutation, she discovers that the not knowing wasn’t the hardest part. It was actually, in some ways, easier than living with the certainty that not only will you ultimately die, but that your death will almost certainly be both premature and painful.
Unable to fully deal with the ramifications of her discovery, Abby heads off to Catalina to spend the summer on the island with her father’s sister, a woman who she barely knows. Once she arrives in Catalina, though, Abby discovers what she probably already knew: you can’t run away from Huntington’s Disease.
As what she hoped would be a summer of healing turns out to be predictably rich in drama, Abby is forced to come to terms with her situation and decide, once and for all, how much she is going to let the discovery of this disease dictate her future.
The perfect mix of typical teen angst and entirely atypical youthful exploration of fate and fatality, Fade Into The Bright was as powerful as it was unputdownable.
Readers will undoubtedly find themselves feeling for 18-year-old Abby, a girl whose life is essentially upended by the cruelest possible trick of fate. They will root for her, despite knowing that their rooting is in vain, that Abby’s future — like all of our futures, really — is already set in stone.
Despite the understandable heaviness of the central conflict of this novel, co-authors Jessica Koosed Etting and Alyssa Embree Swartz managed to pen a tale that sparkled. It felt less like a heavy, mournful requiem and more like a cautiously hopeful, and at times even optimistic, exploration of what it takes to persevere when doing so seems impossible.
A particular strength of this novel was Etting and Swartz’s use of flashbacks throughout.
Though readers essentially start the novel knowing that Abby has tested positive for the Huntington’s Disease mutation, these authors used flashbacks to provide readers a window into the time pre-diagnosis. This flexible narrative structure helped readers better understand not just the protagonist, but also the familial and social forces around her.
As in many young adult novels featuring medically fragile protagonists, this novel did contain a love story thread; however, less commonly, this love story thread was just that, a single thread in what was truly a much larger tapestry. By making this love element part of a larger, protagonist-centered narrative, Etting and Swartz were successful in keeping the focus where it needed to be: on Abby.
Ultimately, I found this novel to be tremendously successful. It easily earns 5 out of 5 cocktails.
I’m a huge fan of YA but, since I stopped teaching, I feel like I’m not spending as much time with the genre. What’s your favorite YA work? Tell me about it in the comments, below, so I can add it to my TBR.
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*I was provided a gifted copy of this title by the publisher*
