(I totally did.) Aster’s book is a melting pot of things you’ve read before but combined in such a way that nevertheless feels fun and propulsive. I may or may not have accidentally stayed up until 2 am one night finishing it. To be clear: I enjoyed the heck out of Lightlark, which puts a fast-paced, entertaining spin on a familiar premise, throwing everything but the kitchen sink at its heroine as she struggles to break a curse and stay alive, and dropping a couple of bombshell twists in the novel’s final third that promise the inevitable sequel will be just as entertaining a ride. Could the finished product ever live up to the idea of the book that seemed already firmly lodged in readers’ heads? Marketing materials have described the book as a mix of A Court of Thorns and Roses and the aforementioned The Hunger Games. A BookTok sensation, the novel has been on the receiving end of both significant hype and sudden criticism among readers online, all before its release date ever even arrived.

If you follow the world of YA publishing at all, you may have heard of Lightlark, the YA debut from middle-grade author Alex Aster that is fairly reminiscent of the mid-2000s speculative fiction boom that gave us books like Divergent. It’s part of the reason people keep reading the same sorts of stories over and over again.

In fact, those formulas-especially when done well-are often incredibly fun. The point is, that popular formulas are as much a part of the world of books as they are any other form of media, and that’s not a bad thing. We’re still reading books about magical teenagers thanks in large part to the Harry Potter franchise and high fantasy romance fans have an awful lot to thank Sarah J. The Hunger Games introduced us to our dystopian era. Vampire fiction got a big boost with the success of Twilight. When a book hits it big, an inevitable glut of titles arrives on shelves that incorporate similar themes and tropes. And that’s as evident in publishing as anything else.

They say that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.

Lightlark amazon