What Light started off cute, with Sierra saying goodbye to her friends in Oregon and gearing up to head to California with her family to work at their annual Christmas tree lot, selling the trees they've spent all year growing. It seemed like a good pick to read leading up to Christmas, and the first half read pretty quickly. I enjoyed reading about Sierra's relationships with her girlfriends and her other best friend, Heather, who lives in the town where Sierra's parents' lot is located. 
 Sierra started to wear on me a bit, though; everyone comments on how she used five-dollar words which means she's super smart, but we never learn that she reads a lot of books or enjoys writing or English class or anything. This little quirk came off as a cliche to make her seem like she's "just not like other girls", which is a YA trope that I can't stand. It also made her friends seem like they had limited vocabularies. Then, the love interest, Caleb, is equally generic, except for his "dark past", which felt like the randomest back story and didn't make a whole lot of sense. (view spoiler)[He flew into a rage after his sister kept accusing him of breaking up their family when their Dad moved away, and he chases her with a knife then stabs her bedroom door repeatedly. I've had some fights with siblings, but grabbing a knife indicates a layer of psychotic that Asher just kind of glosses over with "Hey, it's cool, people change. Plus, he goes to church so it's all good. Forgiveness and stuff." In reality, that kid needed therapy! (hide spoiler)] I felt like the characters were flat and had their conflict glued on to them in order to fill out the 250 pages, (view spoiler)[leading up to a bewildering exchange of "I love you's" after Sierra and Caleb have known each other a few weeks and have kissed like a handful of times (hide spoiler)]. The writing was a bit flat to me as well; at one point Sierra says that she feels the Christmas trees are some kind of profound metaphor, but she just states that instead of Asher actually having to write using metaphor, or anything other than very plain language. 
 I never read Thirteen Reasons Why because the premise did not appeal to me, and I don't think I'll be reading any more of Asher's books after reading this one. If you enjoy clean, contemporary YA that is a quick read, this might work for you, but it didn't really live up to my expectations.