Book Review: 100 Days of Sunlight

Thomas
23 hours ago
14 min read

TL;DR (Too long; Didn't read)

This was my first time reading an Abbie Emmons story. I went into it with little to no expectations, but ended up feeling both inspired and conflicted. This review will primarily focus on the book’s portrayal of disability, how it might've been a bit problematic, and how I personally related to it.

Despite the book containing a slightly problematic portrayal of disability, I ended up giving the book 4 out of 5 stars. Keep reading to understand why.

Author

Abbie Emmons

Genre

Romance, Young Adult

Synopsis

Tessa Dickinson is a 16-year-old who loves to write poetry for her blog. One day, she gets into a car accident that causes her to lose her eyesight for 100 days. She's angry, scared, and struggling to adapt to her new condition.

Hoping that writing poetry will help her cope, her grandparents decide to place an ad in the local newspaper to find someone who will help type and post for her. Weston Ludovico, a boy her age, hears about Tessa and decides he would like to help. However, he makes Tessa's grandparents promise not to tell her that he has a disability of his own.

Tessa isn't happy about receiving help, especially from a teenage boy, but Weston knows from experience that she's just angry at her new situation more than anything else. Tessa tries hard to make Weston hate her, hoping that he would quit. Unfortunately for Tessa, Weston doesn't give up easily.

Weston continues to spend time with Tessa, typing out her poetry and helping her adapt to life with a disability. This eventually leads Tessa to enjoy having him around and, against all odds, Weston begins to feel the same. But there's an issue. What will happen when Tessa regains her sight and finds out that Weston has been keeping his own disability a secret all this time?

Read the original synopsis, reader reviews, and more on the 100 Days of Sunlight Goodreads page.

Recommended English Level

≈B1 Intermediate. The story does include some more advanced vocabulary occasionally, but overall features easy to understand grammar and vocabulary that's mostly appropriate for the B1 level learner. Here is an example of what I mean:

...and when he picks up the phone, I hear a cacophony of voices on the other end—little boys all shouting over each other.

Despite the one unknown word in this sentence, can you still understand it? What do you think cacophony means according to the excerpt?

In this sentence, Tessa hears a lot of voices all shouting over each other. It's likely loud and messy. From that we can guess that cacophony probably means a mixture of loud sounds.

Learning new words using the context around it is called inference. For my advanced learners, you can read more about that in my Reading Lab story Language Learning: Acquisition vs. Traditional Study. Intermediate and beginner learners, make sure you're subscribed to the blog newsletter for a future post about inference.

100 Days of Sunlight Book Review

I would like to start off by talking about the representation of disabled characters in this book. When I first started reading the book, I actually didn't enjoy it. As it progressed, I started to enjoy it more and more, likely because I was connecting to Weston’s character a lot more than Tessa’s. That said, I do think I was being a bit blindsided by Weston’s constant inspirational attitude.

While reading the book, I was feeling inspired partially because I have recently been facing a lot of doubts surrounding my own disabilities. I suffer from invisible disabilities, meaning that if you looked at me, you wouldn't be able to tell there was anything affecting me. However, invisible or not, I am still disabled, and I shouldn't be sensationalizing the idea that 'I can do anything' simply because Weston did that. It's okay to not be able to do certain things. I am not 'less than' simply because I cannot do something, and the writing in this story does tend to highlight that in a negative way.

Weston’s character did inspire me. I won't deny it, and I won't feel guilty for feeling that, but he was showcased as an extreme, and that's not the greatest thing for the disabled community as a whole. I really appreciated how driven Weston was and how he was able to help Tessa adapt to her newfound disability. That said, Weston is a bit reckless in some cases. He does tend to think he can do things on his own and often ignores the help he's offered by the people around him. Having drive is good, but denying help and doing things that put you physically in danger of getting more hurt just because you feel like your disability can't control you isn't the smartest thing.

Tessa is the opposite extreme. She feels helpless and refuses to accept the idea that she can do anything on her own. I do remember thinking that it was odd that her grandparents were trying to find someone to type for her. If she had never really learned to type before, I could understand finding someone to help her learn to type, sure. However, she'd been running her own blog and writing her own poetry for a while before suddenly becoming blind. There's no way she cannot type without looking, right? I do understand if she needs help learning to navigate the computer and, specifically, navigating around different websites. But why would she not go to something like occupational therapy or something more appropriate rather than relying on a fellow teenage boy to assist her?

Okay, yes, I know she didn't want his help and it was decided on her behalf, but that's another concern. Why were her grandparents focused on finding someone her age to type for her rather than getting her into therapy so she can learn to do things herself? Surely, if you're going to force Tessa to do something, forcing her to regain her independence is better than forcing her to rely on a stranger, right?

Overall, I remember feeling irritated at the beginning of the story with all of the decisions being made and how most of it isn't particularly reflective of a real disabled person’s experiences. Then, as I continued to read the book, I learned about Weston's backstory and genuinely loved and connected to the character. Connecting with him the way I did caused me to ignore all of the issues I once had with the book. Suddenly, I felt inspired, and while that’s not exactly a bad thing, I did start to forget how problematic some of this could be for actual amputees or blind people.

Let's dive a little deeper into each aspect of the book.

Overall Story

This story was generally really enjoyable. I did have a difficult time getting into it at the beginning, specifically because of the way she wrote her characters' inner thoughts, but I'll explain that more in the Writing section below.

I went into this story without having read the synopsis. Overall, the story focuses mostly on the relationship between Tessa and Weston in the present day, while guiding us through Weston’s past surrounding how he became disabled in flashback chapters. I really enjoyed the present day story and watching as the characters grew closer, but for me the highlight of the story was Weston’s past.

Each time we got to a flashback chapter, I felt myself getting excited. The more I read about his past, the more I appreciated Weston’s character in the present. Although, in hindsight, I realize now that I was simply focusing on how driven he was and ignoring how reckless he could be.

Because Weston is also disabled, he has personal experience with overcoming such a massive life change, seemingly making him the perfect candidate to help Tessa. Although, just because he is also disabled, doesn't automatically make him the perfect candidate. That is why I was uncertain when first meeting him, but as the story unfolds and we learn about his own ability to overcome personal struggle, I started to feel like he might have been the right choice. Granted, now that I'm done with the story and I'm reflecting on it, I can see how I was blindsiding myself.

Weston is a great character, but not all disabled people should follow in his footsteps, Tessa included. He often tries to do things on his own because he's convinced that his disability has changed nothing. While I personally like that sentiment for myself, I do see how it can be problematic for others. It's okay to have disabilities and it's okay to accept help.

For example, at one point in the story, Weston's mom wants to send him to a school for disabled kids. Weston pushes back against this and tries to prove why he can and should go back to his old school. I personally loved this. Yes, he is disabled, but he also doesn't need to be forced to change schools and leave all of his friends behind simply because he is disabled. Although, before that, we do also see him ignoring his doctor’s orders and throwing out the safety guidelines he was given. That is reckless and not the type of behavior we should encourage.

Accepting a new disability can be hard, and making additional massive life changes, like changing schools in the middle of the year, can make adapting to it even harder. But ignoring our doctors and ignoring general safety isn't smart. We can further hurt ourselves in ways we haven't thought of yet, but our doctors have. So please, don't do this. They are only trying to help.

With that said, I really enjoyed the way Tessa tried to get Weston to leave in the beginning—especially when you remember that she really didn't need his help for typing specifically. When adapting to disabilities, we are often frustrated with this new life change, and we cannot fathom the idea that someone else would actually understand what we're going through. I've been there, albeit not as intensely as Tessa, but I have definitely been there. I did originally enjoy watching Tessa attempt to get rid of Weston, but then as the story progressed, I also got a bit annoyed with Tessa and how she was acting.

Adapting to life changes means accepting that life has changed. That takes time, of course, but it doesn't really feel like Tessa ever accepts this. Instead, we see how she's constantly thinking about when she will get her sight back. Instead of allowing herself to adapt to this potentially permanent new life, she spends her time essentially counting down the days until her vision will come back.

If I'm being honest, I would probably do the same. I genuinely will not fault her for that because this book only takes place over the course of 100 days, so asking her to accept and adapt to being blind is kind of a lot. That said, if the goal of the story was to have Weston help her accept her new life, then it would have been nice to see more of that represented in the story. I sort of did feel like she was starting to accept things could be permanent when she finally goes back to church for the first time, but that was probably the only time I felt it and it wasn't even that strong of a feeling.

Weston’s goal was to remind Tessa of what life has to offer, even in spite of one’s disabilities, and that left me questioning my own life. In a good way! It caused me to reflect on how I've been perceiving my own life lately and whether or not I've also been wallowing in my own personal misery, like Tessa, or if I've been enjoying the good things too. Don't get me wrong, we're all allowed to wallow, I just also believe that we shouldn't allow ourselves to live in that misery forever. This is where I started to ignore the problems in the story.

How this story relates to me

Recently, I have been going through a major flare with my illnesses. I suffer from Mast Cell Activation Syndrome (MCAS), Hypermobile Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome (hEDS), Postural Orthostatic Tachycardia Syndrome (POTS), and chronic migraines. These are the invisible disabilities I mentioned earlier. On the surface, most people don't think I have any illnesses, but on the inside I suffer greatly. Because I had been going through this flare for about a month before starting this book, I think I was more heavily inspired by Weston simply because I had started to live in my misery.

Sometimes that happens, no matter how great we might be at accepting our conditions. Sometimes we fall into a sort of depression because of our illnesses. That's okay. If you're reading this and you suffer from illnesses like mine, don't ever let anyone make you feel guilty for feeling sad about it. It does suck. But it's also good to remember that we can still do other things too.

Yes, there are some things we can't do anymore. Despite what Weston says in this book, you're not wrong for thinking that. It's important to remain level-headed about what you can and cannot do with disabilities. For example, I would love to ride my unicycle across the country. I watch YouTube videos all the time of people doing crazy things like that, and I dream of doing it myself, but it would be wildly reckless to try it. Why?

Imagine that I decided to take the trip and I've been riding my unicycle for three or four days already. Somehow, I've managed to keep my illnesses under control, and I've made it hundreds of miles away from home. I find myself in the middle of nowhere. There's very little cell phone service, and the next town is still very far away. Suddenly, I have a massive flare. MCAS, hEDS, POTS, and a migraine. All at once. That does indeed happen to me sometimes because these conditions are like dominoes; when one falls, they all fall.

What am I supposed to do if I'm in the middle of nowhere suffering greatly and I am suddenly unable to walk to find help, let alone ride my unicycle? This is what I mean about staying level-headed. It's important to remember that we can still do a lot, but we cannot do everything. I can still ride my unicycle around town because, if something happens, I will be within no more than thirty minutes of my home. That is me doing as much as I can while being safe. Weston tends to be reckless. I believe if he were in my shoes, he would absolutely attempt to ride across the country, and it would not end well.

During his class presentation, Weston gives an impassioned speech about his disability. In it, he says:

"...we're told that it's okay to let our problems control us. It's okay to be the victim. It's okay... because you have every right to be miserable. [...] But I want to tell you that it's not okay. It's not okay to let your problem stop you from doing anything you want to do. It's not okay to be your problem."

This excerpt highlights my biggest concern with this book. Yes, it's important to be motivated and driven to do more despite your illnesses or disabilities, but you must be level-headed. Weston is not a level-headed person. This isn't inherently bad, but when you have him be the poster child for disability in your story, then yes it sort of is bad. And I'll say that I don't think he's completely wrong here. We are not our disabilities, we're more than that. But we also shouldn't allow ourselves to pretend those disabilities don't exist.

You're probably wondering why I said I still loved his character and found him to be inspirational, aren't you? Yeah, I know, I had issues with his characterization and the way he represents the disabled community as a whole, but as I said I was in the middle of a massive flare and I was allowing myself to think I couldn't achieve anything new in life. For me, it was simply timing.

"You have a life, for crying out loud! You're sitting there and you're breathing in and out and [...] you can probably feel the sun on your face when you walk outside today. That's [...] really good reasons not to be miserable. And if you keep looking, you'll find new reasons all the time. But you've got to choose it. Over and over again. Every day, every hour, sometimes every minute. You've got to choose it..."

Weston reminded me that I can do more than I think I can, but he did that in a sort of 'cautionary tale' type of way. Seeing how extreme he was reminded me how important it is to be level-headed. No, I will not ride my unicycle across the country, but you had best believe that, after reading that paragraph, I will start riding around my city again. Thank you for reminding me that I can do that, Weston.

The Writing

I feel that I need to quickly touch on two major annoyances I had with this book. There were too many questions and the way the characters spoke or thought felt unnatural quite often.

Let's start with the questions. Abbie Emmons has a tendency to write out all of a characters internal thoughts in bulk. It's odd and it's distracting.

How will I deal with it? [...] Will it happen all at once or a little bit at a time? Will she be able to see everything right away or just shadows and vague shapes?

That excerpt is the beginning of what ended up being THIRTEEN back to back questions. Thirteen. I felt like I was losing my mind in that moment. One or two internal questions are fine, but THIRTEEN? Abbie, please, don't do that again.

As for the characters' unnatural speech and thoughts, let's start with this line:

"Tessa has always been a bit of a loner" [...] "But it wasn't until the accident that she's become... so cold. So shut off from everyone else."

This was a line from Tessa's grandmother, and something about the part "...so cold. So shut off from everyone else." just didn't sit right with me. Granted, this is an old woman, and it's not unheard of for the older generations to speak in interesting ways, but it made me pause and think for a second, and, in my personal opinion, if someone stops to question why a character says something, then it's probably not a natural-sounding line.

"Then don't you dare tell me you understand. [...] You understand nothing. Now get out of my house and don't come back. The position is no longer open—it was never even open to begin with. It was impertinent of you to come here."

While Tessa yells at Weston to get out of her house during their first meeting, I couldn't help but question why she was speaking that way. I understand that Tessa is a writer, so Abbie is likely trying to make her sound like a person who's obsessed with big vocabulary words, but unfortunately it just doesn't work here. This sounds like the rant of a middle-aged woman from the 1800s, not a modern-day teenage girl.

My question to Abbie (if she were reading this) is, would you have said these exact words? You are a writer, just like Tessa, but I really have a hard time believing that, in the heat of the moment, you'd actually say something like this. Granted, I don't know Abbie personally and I could be completely wrong, maybe this is exactly how she speaks. But something tells me that she doesn't and this whole paragraph feels out of place for a teenage girl in the modern day.

The Audiobook

Along with my physical illnesses, I also have ADHD and I am autistic. I don't advertise these as openly because there continues to be a stigma around them. People assume that I must not be a good teacher or that I might not have the ability to help them simply because I am autistic and I have ADHD, but those are basically just two characteristics of my overall self. They don't define me, they're just a part of my definition.

That said, I want to talk about how I manage to read so many books despite how incredibly difficult it is to focus on them. When I read, I usually listen to the audiobook while following along with the physical book or the ebook. I've learned over the years that there is no 'correct' way to do something. It's about finding what works for you and this duo works for me.

I really enjoyed Abbie Emmons' audiobook. It was narrated by Abbie herself and I think she did a fantastic job! For me, a bad audiobook narrator can ruin the listening experience almost immediately. This was not one of those audiobooks. There isn't a lot to say on this subject other than the fact that she did well, but there's one specific thing I really liked.

In a later chapter, Tessa leaves a voicemail. Instead of just reading the voicemail as she had been reading the entire rest of the book, she read it as if it were actually a voicemail and modified the audio to sound like it was coming from a phone call. I don't know why, but I really loved that. I suppose it's partially because of how easy it is for me to get distracted. Adding that extra bit of audio editing didn't just grab my attention, it held it.

Good work Abbie Emmons!

Final Verdict

While this story had some flaws in its writing—specifically issues with representation of disabilities and the awkward character speech patterns—I actually really enjoyed the book overall. My final rating for this book is four stars because it's really not bad overall. It can be fun at times, and the romance was cute. This isn’t a book of the year, but it's also not terrible.

Plus, for my English learners specifically, this book sits in that perfect middle ground of easy grammar with occasionally difficult vocabulary. That's perfect for both intermediate and advanced learners to get some English practice in!

Overall, I would definitely recommend this book. If you read it, let me know what you think about it! I'd love to hear your thoughts.