We Light Up the Sky

Sci-fi meets contemporary YA in We Light Up the Sky, a moving story about three unacquainted Latinx teens banding together ahead of an alien invasion.

Pedro, Luna and Rafa attend high school together but rarely socialize with each other. Then Rafa sees Tasha, Luna's cousin who died two years ago from Covid-19. Luna, stuck in a "deep well of sadness" from her loss, and Pedro, who once dated Tasha, want an explanation for this imposter. After reports of strange lights in the sky and a mysterious earthquake--and as plants and wild animals start to overrun Los Angeles--the three realize fake Tasha is an alien Visitor. Together, the trio face ridiculous mayhem (including dodging mall cops and mountain lions) to learn what danger the alien poses.

Lilliam Rivera (Never Look Back; Dealing in Dreams) depicts teens with complicated home lives coping with a world reeling after the Covid-19 pandemic, the 2020 Black Lives Matter protests and ongoing racially motivated police brutality. Luna feels intense guilt that she didn't speak out the way Tasha had; Pedro, who is "oppressed in his own home," slings jokes ("the only way to survive") and is loud at school; Rafa, living under a highway ramp with his family, must "always exhibit a sense of calm" even though he is "panicking about everything." Racism occurs not as a storyline, but as an implied constant in the characters' lives. Each teen risks jeopardizing something--Rafa his family's safety, Pedro his self-protective persona, Luna her buried emotions--to figure out what the alien wants. As the three struggle to push back against the alien's presence, they realize "an uprising doesn't have to be a mass movement. It only needs a single person." A heart-pounding, eccentric and emotionally complex sci-fi. --Samantha Zaboski, freelance editor and reviewer

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