Each Night Was Illuminated, by Jodi Lynn Anderson, follows Cassie, a girl who simultaneously has lost faith in religion and wants to be a nun, as she spends a summer reconnecting with Elias, a boy she had met a decade earlier. Set in a religious small town in New Jersey, the book grapples with questions of religion, climate change, and coping with trauma.

This book is truly like nothing I had ever read before. While definitely YA, it grapples with ideas in such a way as can only be evocative of the adult literary fiction genre.

Cassie is such a compelling protagonist. Her mom had left a few years earlier, which, in combination with trauma from having witnessed a deadly train accident with Elias as a child, has left her clinging to whatever elements of safety and predictability she can. She finds comfort in working with nuns despite having lost faith in Christianity. She has insomnia, not having been able to sleep more than a couple hours a night in ages, and is fiercely protective of her little brother, Gabe. She’s so complex and has so much to say, and I just really enjoyed being able to see the world through her eyes over the course of the story.

Elias is a little more of a mystery. This is definitely not a traditional YA romance, but there are still some elements of romance in it. The romance is a relatively insignificant part of the story; it’s lovely, but other aspects of Cassie and Elias’ friendship and character development that are much more important. Elias is a chaotic force to Cassie’s careful and controlled approach to life; he draws her out of the shell that she’s been living in for years, and through their friendship over the course of the summer, she begins to heal. He has his own traumas, bringing Cassie with him to search relentlessly for the ghosts of the people they had seen die years earlier, and truly just provided such a good foil to Cassie throughout the narrative.

The small town setting is depicted with such skill that it truly does draw the reader into the community that surrounds Cassie. The town is very much influenced by Father James, a Catholic priest who spreads intolerance and lies about climate change. Very few of them take him seriously, but they still allow him to guide their opinions in harmful ways. It was definitely an interesting commentary on our current political culture.

I wish Cassie’s family had been fleshed out a little more. While her older sister, the town sweetheart and a devout Catholic, is very present, Cassie’s younger brother and father are less so, and I would have liked to see more of their characters.

It really is rare to read a YA book with this sort of depth. It’s a ghost story and a commentary on climate change and a meditation on religion and a metaphor for our current political climate and a story about childhood acquaintances reconnecting and being the only people to truly see the other for who they are. It’s lovely and complex and extremely skillfully written, and I would recommend it to anybody who is looking for a character-driven YA story. I’m giving Each Night Was Illuminated an enthusiastic 5/5 stars.

Thanks so much to HarperCollins Children’s Books for the ARC of this book!