-
Access Our
Best Book Club
Books of 2025!
A Novel
by Lydia Netzer
A debut unlike any other, Shine Shine Shine by Lydia Netzer is a shocking, searing, breathless love story, a gripping portrait of modern family, and a stunning exploration of love, death and what it means to be human.
Sunny Mann has masterminded a perfect life for herself and her family in a quiet Virginia town. Even her genius husband, Maxon, an astronaut on his way to the moon, has been trained to pass for normal. But when a fender bender sends her blonde wig flying, her secret is exposed. Not only is she bald, but she's nothing like the Stepford wife she appears to be. As her façade begins to unravel, we discover the singular world of Sunny and Maxon, two outcasts who found unlikely love in one another. Theirs is a wondrous, strange relationship formed of dark secrets, long-forgotten murders and the urgent desire for connection.
But with parenthood came a craving for normalcy that began to strangle their marriage and family. As Sunny and Maxon are on the brink of destruction, at each other's throats with blame and fear, Maxon departs for the moon, where he's charged with programming the fledgling colony's robots. And when an accident involving Maxon's rocket threatens everything they've built, revealing the things they've kept hidden, they discover nothing will ever be the same…
Read an excerpt
"Characterized by finely textured emotions and dramatic storytelling, Netzer's world will draw readers happily into its orbit." - Publishers Weekly
"Starred Review. Netzer has beautifully crafted an original story with a cast of characters who make up an unconventional but strangely believable family. After all, it is the oddities that make us all human. Readers will laugh, cry, and, ultimately, cheer for Sunny and her husband as their love story plays out from the past to the future. This story will shine, shine, shine for all adult readers." - Library Journal
"Talky uplift and a self-congratulatory tone bog down the novel, but through compelling characters, Netzer raises a provocative question: Is autism a disability, a gift or the norm of the future?" - Kirkus Reviews
"A funny, compelling love story from the freshest voice I've heard in years. Shine, Shine, Shine picked me up and left me changed in ways I never expected. Intelligent, emotional, and relentlessly new, Netzer answers questions you didn't know you were already asking and delivers an unforgettable take on what it means to love, to be a mother, and to be human." - Sara Gruen, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Water for Elephants and Ape House
"Creating one of the most compelling protagonists I've read in a long time, Lydia Netzer manages to capture the outsider in each of us. Whether looking at the moon, a child, the suburban landscape, or the face in the mirror, Netzer shows us something we've never seen before, something we thought we knew. A beautifully written story where the exception proves the rule: the things that seem to divide us are, ultimately, the very things that unite us." - Brunonia Barry, New York Times bestselling author of The Lace Reader and The Map of True Places
"A perfectly structured gem of a book that held me spellbound as I unraveled the twisted histories of this unconventional family. You've never read anything like it, and yet Sunny's story is every woman's story. We are all outsiders, all alone in space, all trying so hard to find a place called home. I loved this book." - Joshilyn Jackson, New York Times bestselling author of Gods in Alabama and Backseat Saints
"An astronaut, an autistic child, a bald woman and a meteor collide, churning up the ground around a couple of decades-old murders. Life and death intersect in this wildly inventive love story I will be talking about and thinking about for years to come. If Yann Martel and Mary Gaitskill had a literary baby, it would look a lot like Lydia Netzer." - Karen Abbott, New York Times bestselling author of Sin in the Second City and American Rose
This information about Shine Shine Shine was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Photo: Katie Weeks Photography
Lydia Netzer was born in Detroit. Her novel Shine Shine Shine was named of the 100 Notable Book of 2012 by the New York Times. She has written two more books, both published in 2014. She and her family live in Norfolk.
.gif)
What really knocks me out is a book that, when you're all done reading, you wish the author that wrote it was a ...
Click Here to find out who said this, as well as discovering other famous literary quotes!
Your guide toexceptional books
BookBrowse seeks out and recommends the best in contemporary fiction and nonfiction—books that not only engage and entertain but also deepen our understanding of ourselves and the world around us.
