Thirteen-year-old Gloria has parents who love her. She also has questions about the woman who gave birth to her. In Where the Light Shines In, Jenny Mattern gives Gloria room to feel both things at once, and that is what made this middle-grade novel so moving for me.
Gloria and her dad enjoy solving crossword puzzles together, but the puzzles she faces in her own life don’t come with enough clues. She has spent years studying the faces of women around her, wondering whether one of them might be her biological mother. Gloria and her best friend even play a game of looking for women in their thirties who could be a match. It sounds playful at first, but it also shows how often the question is on Gloria’s mind. She can be out living her life and still be looking for an answer.
Then Gloria sees an obituary photo of a woman who looks remarkably like her. Suddenly, the possibility she has imagined for years feels close enough to investigate. There is a painful catch: the woman in the photo has died. Gloria sets out to learn who she was and whether their resemblance means anything, keeping her search secret from the parents who have always been there for her.
I loved Gloria. Her desire to find her biological mother felt understandable and deeply personal. She isn’t searching because her adoptive parents have failed to love her. She wants to know where she came from, whom she resembles, and what pieces of her story she hasn’t been told. Mattern makes that longing feel like a missing piece and a mystery Gloria can’t stop trying to solve. I wanted answers right along with her.
The family dynamic between Gloria and her parents was another highlight. Their love gives the story warmth, but it doesn’t make Gloria’s questions disappear. That balance matters. Gloria can appreciate the family she has and still wonder about her biological family. As her search pulls her into more secrecy, the tension comes from caring about everyone involved. I wanted Gloria to discover what she could, and I also worried about the growing distance between her and the people who love her.
Mattern does a good job building that tension through Gloria’s determination. An obituary photo is a striking place to find a possible clue about your beginnings, and it gives her search an emotional weight from the start. Each step toward an answer feels important to Gloria. At the same time, each lie makes it harder for her to let her parents into what she’s experiencing. The mystery kept me reading, but Gloria’s feelings kept me invested.
I especially liked how the game with her best friend helped establish Gloria’s search as part of her everyday life. This isn’t a question that appears only after she finds the photo. She has been wondering and watching for a long time. By the time she spots that resemblance in the obituary, I understood why she would feel compelled to follow it, even when keeping it to herself became difficult.
I did have one question that stayed with me: I was surprised Gloria’s parents seemed to be in the dark about her biological family, too. I wondered whether her adoption was closed and why her parents didn’t reach out to the adoption agency to help her look for information. It’s possible the book addressed that reasoning and I missed it—I read enough books that details occasionally get confuffled together! Still, I wanted a little more clarity on what her parents knew and what options they had when Gloria needed answers.
That question didn’t take away from what I enjoyed most. Where the Light Shines In is a lovely, emotional read about a girl trying to understand her story while learning how hard it is to carry big questions alone. Gloria’s search has the pull of a mystery, but the heart of the book is her relationship with her family and her hope that she can make sense of the spaces she feels inside.
I give it 4.8 stars ⭐⭐⭐⭐✨.
I’d recommend it for middle grade classrooms and readers who enjoy thoughtful family stories, especially young readers exploring questions about adoption and identity. Gloria’s experience is her own, but her wish to understand where she comes from is one many readers can connect with. Bring tissues if family stories tend to get you; this one has plenty of heart.
Thank you to the author and publisher for the book and my honest review. This tour is sponsored by Toppling Stacks Tours.
About the book:
Genre: Middle Grade Contemporary
Publishing date: September 29, 2026
Goodreads | Amazon | Barnes & Noble | IndieBound
Rep: adoption
Synopsis:
“…if there’s one thing my thirteen years of life have taught me, it’s that having parents who love you doesn’t erase the somebody else who brought you into the world.”
Despite being adopted into a loving family, thirteen-year-old Gloria feels as if her life is a bit too much like the crossword puzzles she and her dad enjoy solving together: too many empty spaces and not enough clues.
For as long as she can remember, Gloria has studied the faces of random women in the hopes of finding her birth mother. But when she finally lands on the perfect candidate, it’s in a place she never could have expected—an obituary photo.
Determined to learn more about this dead woman who looks just like her, Gloria embarks on a secret mission to fill in the gaps of her origin story.
At first, finding answers about her past feels exactly right. But as the lies Gloria tells keep piling up, and each step toward her biological family takes her farther from the parents who have loved her forever, she starts to wonder if she’ll ever be able to fill her empty spaces. Because how can you feel truly whole when you’re shattering from the inside out?
Meet the author:
Jenny Mattern is a crafter of stories, a fledgling poet, and a cake-for-breakfast enthusiast who wishes she lived in a tiny cottage on a windswept cliff above the sea. Alas, she lives in the mountains in a landlocked state—lovely, yes, but much too far from the roar of the ocean for her liking.
Born and raised in the Seattle area, Jenny now lives in Montana with her family and a menagerie of pets. Where the Light Shines In is her debut novel.