The Brightness Between Us
by Eliot Schrefer
read by James Fouhey
HarperCollins, 2024. 11 hours, 3 minutes.
Review written February 8, 2025, from a library eaudiobook.
Starred Review
The Brightness Between Us is a sequel to The Darkness Outside Us – and it’s very much a sequel. Don’t read the second without reading the first. The good news is that both are outstanding. I was lucky that I didn’t start the first until after the second was out, so the only waiting I did was for my hold to come in.
This book begins on a distant planet with Ambrose and Kodiak, the universe’s last two surviving humans – and now two children, Owl and Yarrow, who were born from zygotes sent across the galaxy in their ship. Yarrow turns sixteen at the start of the book, and Owl will reach that age soon. So far, they are the only children to survive out of many attempts.
Our fledgling human settlement is up against two major challenges in this book. First, external to them, is the fact that the planet where they live is prone to comet strikes. They need to make a bunker before the next one strikes. The second one is more personal to them. Yarrow has undergone a strange personality change since his sixteenth birthday. He’s getting intrusive thoughts about killing all his loved ones.
And then a beacon appears – falling from space – with lights specifically telling Ambrose and Kodiak to find it. Well, it lands somewhere out in the unexplored part of the planet, where Owl has been hoping to explore anyway.
And after the beacon appears, the narration takes us back to earth many thousand years in the past – to the original Ambrose and Kodiak shortly after they learned that their supposed mission to Titan was a ruse.
And in the process of going back and forth between the two time periods, we learn more about the original twosome (and I love that they ended up meeting each other and together trying to escape capture). But we also learn that there is a reason for some of the troubles of the colony – and why the beacon got sent to try to fix them.
Now, the whole thing about the sabotage – that was the first place in this whole saga where the science got hard for me to believe. Let me just say I’m skeptical about that whole part. And I also wasn’t thrilled to go back to the younger, more hedonistic and immature Ambrose character. But once I got past those things, it was good to again watch Ambrose and Kodiak learning to work together. And the situation certainly gave the characters on the planet challenges to overcome together.
And honestly, by the time the book was past about the halfway point, I found myself looking for more excuses to listen. These characters – in all their iterations – have firmly found a place in my heart.
Find this review on Sonderbooks at: www.sonderbooks.com/Teens/brightness_between_us.html
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Disclaimer: I am a professional librarian, but the views expressed are solely my own, and in no way represent the official views of my employer or of any committee or group of which I am part.
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