Lights All Night Long by Lydia FitzpatrickMy rating: 4 of 5 stars
An amazing book, quite enjoyable and surprising. I didn't think this was going to be a mystery but there was a bit of that in this book. It was mainly about this smart Russian kid Ilya and his older brother Vladimir. They grow up in a small oil refinery village in Russia, a place where no one goes. Ilya, the smart one, learned English easily, and with some luck was able to go to the United States through an exchange program with the oil refinery company in Russia and one in Louisiana.
The book is split between Ilya's time in the U.S. and his time in Russia, mostly of the last year or so. Ilya loves and looks up to his brother immensely and when the book starts Vladimir is in jail in Russia. Ilya knows that the crime, three murders, were not done by his brother despite the fact that Vladimir confessed. Ilya become obsessed with trying to solve the murders even while in the U.S.
A new drug called krokodil appears in Russia and seems to explain much of Vladimir's behaviors, but there is more to it. The book reveals more and more as you read. My only complaint is that the book kept going after the reveal of who did kill the women. Sometimes it's a good thing to give a little more, an epilogue or coda, but actually I think it would have been left at a shorter point than it did.
Overall an good book. And while it is about teenagers I would not call this a YA book. Then again, I'm not of that age anymore.
Thanks to Penguin Press and NetGalley for an uncorrected electronic advance review copy of this book.
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