Trish Cook - Midnight Sun.

Trish Cook – Midnight Sun.

Rating: 9 out of 10.

My fourth little post today and I’m enjoying it so much. Even after a really long shift at work I still wanted to come home and write. That’s a good thing right? I have a few days off to properly plan and organise my site as well as plan some Instagram posts so there will be a lot more coming from me in the future.

The next book I am talking about is Midnight Sun by Trish Cook. This one broke me honestly. I cried like a baby at many points throughout the book and this happens every single time I have read it. As always, spoilers are going to be mentioned throughout so if you don’t like that sort of thing, come back to this post after you have read it. But here is a little information about the book to go with my recommendation.

“Katie can’t leave her house during the day: she has a rare disease that makes even the smallest amount of sunlight deadly. But everything changes when one evening, singing her heart out on a deserted station platform, she meets Charlie.

Before the night is out, Katie is smitten. But she hasn’t told Charlie her secret. She just wants to have a normal love story, before reality kicks in.

Lost in her night-time summer romance, Katie knows that love will light the way.

A heart-breaking tale of love, loss and one nearly perfect summer.”

Midnight Sun follows Katie Price and her life living with XP (xeroderma pigmentosum). XP is a genetic condition in which the person has an extreme sensitivity to ultraviolet (UV) rays from sunlight. Because of this Katie never goes out during the day, only during the night. She is home schooled and only has contact with a limited number of people, including her dad and best friend Morgan.

At the beginning of the story we see Katie graduate from high school, or what would have been her graduation if she had gone to school. She was watching the live stream of all her would be classmates graduating. Her dad interrupts this with an impromptu graduation for her and a gift. Her late mothers old guitar. This was such a touching moment. To Katie, having the guitar with her ‘is like having a small part of her with me always’. This is where the road to Charlie starts.

Charlie. The best part of Katie’s day for a very long time had been watching Charlie walk by or skate by her house on his way to school. She sat and waited there everyday and it became part of her routine. She has the biggest crush on him and its really adorable knowing that she just sat and watched for him. Or is that creepy? If it wasn’t two teenagers I’d definitely say creepy. But for this girl, this felt as close to the people she would have been at school with as she’s going to get.

Katie takes her guitar to perform one of the songs she has written at the station platform and meets Charlie officially, well kind of, she freaks out. I get it. I would too. The writing of this part of the book was so good. It could have been an actual description of my teenage years. AWKWARD. I related to Katie on the grounds of having mortifyingly embarrassing encounters with absolutely everybody.

As you can guess, Charlie is smitten with Katie and they end up together. They only meet at night though, Katie hasn’t told Charlie about her XP. As a reader you feel as happy as Katie does though. You completely understand why she wouldn’t tell this new boyfriend that she has a life altering disease. Despite how impractical and unwise it seems to keep it a secret, you get it and you feel for her and the poor cards life has dealt her. They embark on a summer love, well a night time summer love (?) and Katie is almost a new person. No longer the girl that is pretty much confined to her house. The night Charlie finds out about Katie’s XP he takes her on an extravagant date and they end up staying out too late but only realising it when the sun comes up. Katie rushes home but not before it’s too late and she was exposed to the sunlight. And sadly we then learn that Katie’s days are numbered, or more numbered than they previously were.

Charlie’s character is written pretty much like most male leads in books. Not that that stopped me loving him. He seems determined to be with Katie despite her diagnosis. He knows she is dying and wants to spend as much time with her as he can. In his words he has never met anyone like her. He is just as in this as she is. So they do exactly that, they make the most of the rest of her short life.

This next part of the book was where I started crying. I’m probably the only person that found this the saddest part, but the way it was included in the book, and the significance that the end of Katie’s life being the beginning of her being alive was amazingly written and place within the book. Charlie has a swim meet and the coach from the college he wanted to go to was there (Katie set it up without him knowing), and Katie manages to get her dad to take her to watch. Mr Price was such a careful father. He knew that a triggering event for her XP could happen at any time so he took every single precaution he could (I’ll come back to him shortly). This scene shows him loosening the reigns and accepting that the trigger has already been pulled. He is accepting that his daughter has very limited time so he allows her to go to the swim meet. During the day. Something we wouldn’t have seen happen beforehand. Katie is dying, but she now has the chance to live a little. Naturally I cried and cried over it.

Where do I even start with Katie’s dad. He is honestly such a wonderful character. He is so untypical and I adore how he was written. Thankyou Trish Cook! He does everything he can for his daughter. He has already lost his wife too soon, I can’t imagine having gone through that, and Katie’s diagnosis that anyone I know would still be standing. He is an emotionally strong individual who’s motivation is his child. His life is built around Katie, whether that is staying up late so she can go outside, or just being her rock and best friend. He had to be cruel to be kind to Katie as a child. Say no to her going to parks, home school her on his own and it shows in the mature and lovely child he managed to raise, despite every single obstacle in the way.

Morgan is another incredible character. She may not be the main character but she is so so important. She is the only friend Katie has ever known. And by friend I mean someone that isn’t her father. It takes a special kind of person to be there for someone who can’t go out in the sunlight. To sit in a bedroom and spend time together in the confines of the same room rather than go to movies or concerts or even just a playdate in the park. For such a young character Morgan seems to understand the importance of being there for her friend.

Katie knows that any day could be her last, she has a maturity about her whilst also being moony eyed and consumed by this new love in her life. Her life revolves around these three people, in the same house she has always been, and while her horizons are widening she has very limited time left to take advantage of it.

During Katie’s last days Charlie takes her out to a recording studio that he paid for with the money he was saving for a new truck (major aw). She sings the song she wrote for him called Charlie’s song which later goes viral on the internet. She is living her dream while she still can, and I was crying. Unsurprisingly.

Throughout the book we are told that Charlie is taking care of a boat for the summer for people who are away. And the peak of the sadness I felt was when Katie asked if she could go with him on the last day of taking care of it. The book says “But I’m growing weaker every day, every hour, every minute. Today is my last chance. I know it. I probably won’t have a tomorrow even if I don’t go.” And with that sentence the tears were going again. Cook got me crying at regular intervals throughout the book. Not just because I’m a cry baby, but because it’s damn good writing. When Katie is getting on the boat with Charlie the scene reads as last goodbyes. She is thanking Morgan for staying by her side and making her Dad promise that he’ll find some happiness and not fall into a downwards spiral. Her dad was thanking her for choosing him as a father and it is all so emotional. Once actually on the boat, Katie is sat with Charlie and she says “I’ve waited my whole life to feel like this” while in the sun. and it hits you just how hard life has been for this person. I can not even imagine not being able to sit outside in the sun or nipping to the shops during the day when I’m bored. So whilst the goodbye had me crying out of sadness, the happy tears followed. She finally got to sit in the sun, with her boyfriend, on a boat. Having a picture perfect moment.

The very end of the book, seemingly after Katie had passed there are two letters as part of the epilogue. The first is a letter to Charlie from Jack Price, Katie’s father. The letter convinces the readers that Jack kept his promise to Katie. He is living. And it also resolves Charlie of any guilt he felt for Katie’s passing, for keeping her out too late. It also told Charlie that Katie left her songbook, the item most precious to her, for him.

The second letter is to Charlie, from Katie. This letter is the last part of the book. And I sobbed. The thank you to Charlie for giving her something she never thought she had. For walking and skating by her window. For teaching her how to live. She writes the words “even though our time together was short, the stars have been burning for every moment of it. And the light from those moments will be shining down for the next thousand years”. The most beautiful sentence I have ever read.

I don’t have enough words to describe the emotions I felt from this book. I had to pick it up to get some exact quotes while I was writing this and the tears came again. I wasn’t even reading the whole book, just picking out quotes and it hit me so hard. I will never forget this story.

In my opinion it is so brave and bold to write a book about an illness that isn’t so well known. The wondering if people will understand it, if people will relate to it, and the questioning whether you had got the information accurate enough for it to hit people. And Cook did everything right. The perfect characters, the way each part of the story symbolises something different to Katie and the way her life was lived. It was extraordinary. Thankyou Trish Cook, for sharing this story.

I hope that everyone else loved this as much as I did.

Stay Curious!

J x