There is a Light by Belladonnacullen
Review by FictionFreak95
Rating: M
Genre: Romance/Angst, AH
Characters: Edward/Bella
Summary: This was 1987; before the Internet, before Twitter, before Facebook – this was back when it was still possible for people not to know about things: big things - like bands, and little things - like G-spots. AH, ExB, with some other parings along the way.
I’ve been trying to figure out a way to accurately describe this fic that has me inexplicably stoked to read every time Belladonna updates. I think the best I can do is to try and explain how it makes me feel when I’m reading it. I should start by telling you, Edward Masen is a rock star and Bella Swan is a girl who thinks only he understands her. Edward and his lyrics. This may be true but I think what Edward doesn’t realized until it’s too late is that Bella is the only one who really understands him as well.
Appropriately, this story takes me back to the best of times and the worst of times…the 80’s. When I was in my *coughs* late teens *coughs* and everything I felt about boys seemed to new and exciting, heart breaking even…when I listened to songs on the radio with passion and attention that had me memorizing the words within hours of buying the cassette tape because I would rewind my walkman several thousand times in order to get the timing and air drums just right so I could vicariously live through the lead singer’s pain and anguish.
Prince’s movie, Purple Rain was released and taught us the meaning of the phrase rebel with a bad boy cause… we were taught the disarming truths about love and loss through The Breakfast Club and Top Gun showed us exactly how cheesy men can be when they are woo’ing a woman… then Ferris Bueller gave us a few lessons about taking life by the horns and making every day count.
There’s just something about that time that makes me extremely nostalgic and Belladonna’s story gives me this exact same feeling, every single time. Let’s not even get me started on the way she writes the mystery of a Bella with a child who we are never quite sure (yet) as to who the father is, a *coughs* gay Seth *coughs* that you will fall in love with despite his idiotic boy type tendencies in breaking Bella’s heart, and an emo Jake who wants to fly jets.
Plus the time warps. The way Bella has a moment in current time that transports her back to a memory of something that changed her life… and takes us right back there with her, only to end that memory, leaving us with even more questions and anxiety than we had to begin with.
EXCERPT from the PROLOGUE:
"Tell me more one day, Mommy?"
"How about a little every day until the story's told?"
"Okay, Mommy."
"Okay, Little One. Night, night."
"Night, Mommy."
I gently close her bedroom door. I tiptoe to my room and find the box at the back of my closet. I haven't opened it since long before my daughter was born. I sift through a dozen little notebooks filled with the twisted cursive handwriting I carefully constructed as a teenager. The books are full of poems and quotes and lyrics and drawings. A handmade card flutters to the floor and my breath catches in my throat.
It was made for my seventeenth birthday. Thirteen watercolor irises float in a sea of green. There are thirteen for the date we were going to see them together, and also thirteen for the date I first met him. Lucky thirteen.
Tears prick my eyes.
I tend to think just of the good pieces of this story, but so many of those parts only happened in my head. The reality of it all is stuck between pages of my fantasy, thrown away with old memories, buried deep in the sandy soil of Long Island, New York, and throw over bridges into the gray waters of the Hudson.
I know the story won't be the same without those bits.
I hope I tell it well.
I know one thing for sure: it all began with a question
Do you know The Masens?
*Gives me goose bumps all over again*. Belladonnacullen breaks my heart so good with this fic. It is a magical puzzle that we get bits and pieces of each week in an effort to put together the missing chinks so that we can eventually see the ultimate affect these two have had on one another over the years. True, we have yet to find out if there’s an HEA but I have faith and actually, in all honesty, even if it doesn’t end with a pretty bow on top of it, I will take it, hold my hand out to miss Belladonnacullen, tell her thank you and then ask, “Could I please have some more?” in my bestest impersonation of the orphan “Oliver”.
Read this story and I assure you, you’ll be left feeling like you just took a ride through time and space and all those feeling of love and loss you had back in the day, they’ll resurface again. It’s painfully wonderful and I am oh so grateful that one of the sweetest women in the fandom is sharing this ride with us.
Go now. Stop what you’re doing and open this story up. You won’t regret it.
Seriously.
awesome review Jo - you explained it perfectly!! Everyone should be reading this!