Reviewed by Kristin
Shine Shine Shine
is a first novel by a promising young author.
The story centers around Sunny and Maxon, a married couple who have
known each other since childhood. Sunny was
born during a complete solar eclipse to missionary parents in Burma. Returning to rural Pennsylvania, Sunny and
her mother meet neglected Maxon and he quickly becomes part of their lives. Flash forward twenty years and Maxon
is a genius astronaut working in space on a project to put a robot colony on the moon while Sunny is back on earth about to give birth to their
second child while being with their autistic son, Bubber, and her dying mother.
Sunny has been trying to keep up the appearance of a
typical family in Norfolk, Virginia, but the pretenses start to fall away as
she has a minor car accident. As the
other vehicle hits Sunny’s van, her blonde wig flies off and out the window,
landing in a puddle. Suddenly, Sunny
decides she doesn’t want to hide behind the wig anymore.
Maxon has always been socially awkward. In fact, he and Sunny have made up formulas
for him to understand how to communicate with other people. Maxon is brilliant, but not comfortable in
social situations. He seems to
understand his robots better than people.
When an accident damages the spacecraft, Maxon and the team must work to
save the mission and save their lives.
All of this sounds fantastic and strange, but Lydia
Netzer weaves the characters together and shows what it means to be a
family. At its heart, this book is about
people feeling different from the world around them, but being accepted by
others and understanding that those differences are a normal part of life.
Lydia Netzer has a very unique voice and I look
forward to reading more of her work. You
can read more about the author at http://lydianetzer.blogspot.com/
.
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