206. Shine Shine Shine by Lydia Netzer

Shine Shine Shine by Lydia Netzer (US) - (Canada) - (Kindle)

Pages: 320
Ages: 18+
Finished: Jul. 29, 2012
First Published: Jul. 17, 2012
Publisher: St. Martin's Press
Genre: realistic fiction, family drama
Rating: 5/5

First sentence: "Deep in darkness, there was a tiny light."

Publisher's Summary: "When Maxon met Sunny, he was seven years, four months, and eighteen-days old. Or, he was 2693 rotations of the earth old. Maxon was different. Sunny was different. They were different together.
Now, twenty years later, they are married, and Sunny wants, more than anything, to be “normal.” She’s got the housewife thing down perfectly, but Maxon, a genius engineer, is on a NASA mission to the moon, programming robots for a new colony. Once they were two outcasts who found unlikely love in each other: a wondrous, strange relationship formed from urgent desire for connection. But now they’re parents to an autistic son. And Sunny is pregnant again. And her mother is dying in the hospital. Their marriage is on the brink of imploding, and they’re at each other’s throats with blame and fear. What exactly has gone wrong?
Sunny wishes Maxon would turn the rocket around and come straight-the-hell home.
When an accident in space puts the mission in peril, everything Sunny and Maxon have built hangs in the balance. Dark secrets, long-forgotten murders, and a blond wig all come tumbling to the light. And nothing will ever be the same.…
A debut of singular power and intelligence, Shine Shine Shine is a unique love story, an adventure between worlds, and a stunning novel of love, death, and what it means to be human."

Acquired: Received an egalley from the publisher through NetGalley.

Reason for Reading: I was attracted to this book because of the autistic son.  Both my own son and myself are autistic (me: Asperger's) so I am often drawn to books that depict these characters.  The book also sounded like it would be "quirky", something I really enjoy.

All I can really say about this book is "WOW"!  What a beautiful story.  Sunny and Maxon share the ultimate love story.  This book is about love, the pure and simple kind and how complicated we can make it out to be.  What is experienced between Sunny and Maxon is that something kind of wonderful that one can only hope they will get to experience in some small way in one's own life.  This is a romance for people who don't read romances.  The book also explores autism and Asperger's in all its awesome reality, both its drawbacks and its benefits.  We see this way of being from all possible angles, theories and thoughts.  I was truly swept away with these characters and in love with both autistics, Bubber and Maxon, as I saw myself and my son in them to certain degrees, while totally relating to them.  And yet I also related to Sunny, who has her own difference she must live with who only wants to be "normal" and have her family fit in and *be* "normal" like everyone else.  But as she learns, no one is really normal and the most normal of us all usually are faking it on the outside, just trying to fit in like everybody else.  An extremely powerful book, with characters who hit your heart and won't easily be forgotten.  I rarely read a book and imagine re-reading it, but this is one I *know* I will be rereading a few years down the line!