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The Lights Between Tunnels
Jennifer Beckett, a wealthy alumna of Harrington High School, returns to her alma mater to introduce a new scholarship competition worth $500,000. Each phase of the competition includes clues, riddles, and various tasks. Included in the Beckett Scholarship Competition are a comedy podcast about death, time dilation, Billy Joel, Harry Potter, and the Lascaux cave paintings. Alex, Peyton, and Cameron, three best friends with complex backgrounds, decide to enter assuming it will be a fun, safe experience. They didn't realize the extreme measures some people would take to win the scholarship until their lives were at risk.Alex, whose gender stays in question until the end of the story, is disturbed by American society. The competition is another example of the unjust world we have created. Peyton uses a quirky sense of humor to hide the truth about her painful past. Cameron tries to forget about his disturbing, bourgeois family while harboring a secret love for his best friend. They all have their issues. The marginalization of teenage stress, anxiety, and family problems continues to take its toll on each of them. Their conversations offer the joy and laughter needed to tolerate life's troubles. And every minute of everyday, Alex's primary struggle is tolerating life.
326 pages, Paperback
Published May 3, 2018
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
August 14, 2022
My favorite author. This book cuts you to your core. It makes you feel deeply. It teaches you about the realistic way our teenagers are having to reckon with life. And reminds you of the importance of relationship, empathy and kindness.
February 19, 2021
Shawn Wichert writes an intriguing tale of the life of three high achieving high school students in his 2018 book, The Lights Between Tunnels. It is an important book that examines the stresses from school, home, society, and the world that the most responsible teens take to heart in today’s world.
The three students, friends from elementary school years are inseparable. Alex, a brilliant young woman who lost her mother at a young age, struggles to deal with school, her own depression, and her father’s addiction. Cameron is an accomplished young man from a well-to-do family who has no worries about how his future college will be funded but deals with parents who expect him to cultivate his friendships from their financially successful social network. Peyton deals with the horrors of the past that have landed her in the custody of her aunt. The characters in Wichert’s book are well developed, realistic, and likable. The challenges they face as high achieving AP and dual enrollment students are real.
The plot of The Light Between Tunnels centers around a competition sponsored by a wealthy alumnus of their public high school in East Tennessee. She offers a five hundred-thousand-dollar scholarship to one student of the many who enter a pseudo-academic/problem-solving competition that spans the school year. Two of the three friends enter the contest with the other providing emotional and other support to the two whose socio-economic status requires assistance with their post-high school futures.
I found this book to be not just a realistic account of the life of some of the brightest in our secondary schools but an entertaining read as well. Shawn Wichert’s book is well written, easy to read, as well as one that makes some profound statements about how stress can affect our youth and our own obligation to be watchful and protective of this vulnerable population. Read this book, it is one that will give you pause and stay with you for a long time.
The three students, friends from elementary school years are inseparable. Alex, a brilliant young woman who lost her mother at a young age, struggles to deal with school, her own depression, and her father’s addiction. Cameron is an accomplished young man from a well-to-do family who has no worries about how his future college will be funded but deals with parents who expect him to cultivate his friendships from their financially successful social network. Peyton deals with the horrors of the past that have landed her in the custody of her aunt. The characters in Wichert’s book are well developed, realistic, and likable. The challenges they face as high achieving AP and dual enrollment students are real.
The plot of The Light Between Tunnels centers around a competition sponsored by a wealthy alumnus of their public high school in East Tennessee. She offers a five hundred-thousand-dollar scholarship to one student of the many who enter a pseudo-academic/problem-solving competition that spans the school year. Two of the three friends enter the contest with the other providing emotional and other support to the two whose socio-economic status requires assistance with their post-high school futures.
I found this book to be not just a realistic account of the life of some of the brightest in our secondary schools but an entertaining read as well. Shawn Wichert’s book is well written, easy to read, as well as one that makes some profound statements about how stress can affect our youth and our own obligation to be watchful and protective of this vulnerable population. Read this book, it is one that will give you pause and stay with you for a long time.
June 16, 2020
One of my all time favorites
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews