Review: Last Light (Night Owl #2) by M. Pierce

Last Light (Night Owl #2) by M. Pierce
Blurb from Goodreads:

Matt Sky is missing. After a solo ascent of Longs Peak that left only a large blood stain, tatters of climbing clothing, and the tracks of an animal in the snow, he is presumed dead ...

Hannah Catalano is guarding a secret ...

Tensions rise, secrets grow bigger, and passions run deeper in the highly anticipated second book in the Night Owl Trilogy.

My Review:

Earlier this year, I kept hearing cryptic but exciting things about M. Pierce and the author's debut novel, Night Owl.  I wasn't sure what to expect but I was absolutely blown away by Night Owl.  I couldn't put it down and it ended on this weird cliffhanger that has left me hanging for the past seven months.  After Mud Vein, Night Owl and Last Light are the best adult books I have read this year.  Last Light did not disappoint as it seems so many sequels lately have done.  Not only was the cliffhanger in the first book explained and expanded but a new conflict was presented immediately, with no easy resolution, and that allowed for new insight into these characters that I have come to love so, so much even though Last Light will certainly leave you hating either or both of them at some point.  These books are so much more than any sort of "love" story or romance . . . in fact, I wouldn't describe them in that way at all.  If you want to crawl into a character's mind even when the character may do something that is absolutely mind boggling (prime example of this being successful is Dirty Red by Tarryn Fisher), then this series is for you.  Hannah and Matt come together, and cannot let go, because there is no way either of them could be their own person and be in a relationship if it was not with each other.  I am reminded of this quote from Steve Kloves' screenplay adaption of Wonder Boys by Michael Chabon:

Whenever I wondered what Sara saw in me, and I wondered more than once, I always came back to the fact that she read everything, every spare moment. She was a junkie for the printed word. And, lucky for me, I manufactured her drug of choice.

I certainly have a tendency to get hung up on the uniqueness of a book or a plot or a character but there is something so fresh and new about these books.  Aside from the fact that the books are about an author, M. Pierce, that is unknown to the world in the books (by choice), and that these books are similarly written by M. Pierce, an author that we know nothing about in this world, the story is compelling.   I absolutely cannot wait to see where book 3, After Dark, takes us and these characters.

Last Light will be released October 28, 2014, and you can purchase here.  If you have not yet read Night Owl in anticipation of the second book of this series, you really, really should!

"December is the cruelest month to die in. 

I smiled and slouched in my chair.  I couldn't go wrong, riffing on Eliot.^[1] 

I thumbed my way to chapter one and began to write.  A cup of cold coffee stood by my laptop.  I sipped it as I worked. 

I wrote for three hours, stopping only to laugh or gaze out at the mountains.  Once I walked through the cabin.  Then I returned to the desk.  As long as I was in the story, I wasn't aching for Hannah.  As long as I was in the story, I wasn't worrying about Hannah on the East Coast with my family."                         

[1]   

Interestingly, M. Pierce refers to T.S. Eliot and, presumably, the first line of The Waste Land.  Those medieval studies majors (like me) know that Eliot was alluding to Geoffrey Chaucer and, more specifically, the first line of The Canterbury Tales.