Things We Hide From the Light

The novel uses one of the romance genre’s common frameworks to develop its plot and characters: the unlikely romance between two seemingly mismatched people.

Lina and Nash are clearly wrong for each other. In a switch of gender stereotypes, Nash is a nester, and Lina is a player: Nash, for all his rugged machismo, yearns for the stability of a family and a home; Lina, meanwhile, goes happily from short fling to short fling with no thought of settling down. Nash’s recent shooting has left him emotional, impulsive, and rash; in contrast, Lina’s years-long coping mechanism with her trauma is to be in complete control at all times.

However, as befits this time-tested structure, the novel soon reveals that Nash and Lina have many things in common. Both love the puzzle-solving aspects of their jobs, which involve detective work. Both have complex relationships with their parents: Nash has not forgiven his father for developing alcoholism, while Lina lies to her overprotective parents about what she does for a living. Both underwent near-death experiences that they have not psychologically recovered from. And of course, both are immediately and powerfully sexually attracted to one another.

To prove that its protagonists do in fact work as a couple, the novel relies on a romance novel mainstay: The fantasy that the first sexual experience between two partners who have never discussed each other’s sexual preferences will nevertheless be life-altering. When Nash and Lina first have sex—after a long buildup that serves as the novel’s take on narrative suspense—the experience is incredible enough to bridge the gap into emotional closeness. As Lina concludes after one in a series of orgasms, “I wasn’t capable of feeling this kind of connection to a man if there wasn’t something essential, elemental there to build on” (392).

The novel’s happily-ever-after ending reverses the idea that opposites attract to demonstrate that Nash and Lina have internalized some aspects of each other’s personalities. Nash has loosened up enough to have sex in public, go skydiving, and get a tattoo. Conversely, Lina has developed the desire for marriage and children.

Duncan Hugo, Lucian Rollins, and Nash Morgan have an important piece of characterization in common: All three have created identities in opposition to their fathers. In the novel, mothers tend to be nurturing, peers have empowering friendships, brothers support one another, and neighbors are helpful. However, father-son relationships are complicated by competition, paranoia, and jealousy.

Readers know little about Lucian Rollins, but for Nash, Lucian’s childhood with his abusive father is key to who Lucian is as an adult. This is one of the few pieces of information about his friend that Nash shares with Lina. Lucian spent time in jail as a result of standing up to his father—an experience that hardened Lucian and developed his interest in extrajudicial surveillance. Lucian’s career as the head of an information gathering network that works outside the standard legal channels is the direct result of growing up in a dysfunctional family terrorized by his father.

Duncan Hugo should fit within the underworld empire his ruthless father, Anthony Hugo, built. But the erratic Duncan is a “screw-up” compared to his methodical and Machiavellian father, who demeans him and abuses him. After Duncan fails to secure a list of informants or kill Nash, Anthony reportedly beats Duncan’s “ass to hell and bloody” (211). Tina, Duncan’s ex-girlfriend, summarizes Duncan as “a man whose Daddy didn’t love him enough” (212)—again evoking the idea that the father-son bond is primal in explaining a male character’s personality. Certain that his father’s respect cannot be earned, Duncan is motivated to eliminate his father by feeding information to the FBI; Duncan assumes that once his father has been arrested, he will inherit the family organization.

Nash is the only male character whose relationship with his father Duke has a chance of being repaired. The first time he encounters Duke in the novel, Nash is angry, resentful, and horrified at his father’s state: Duke is unhoused and has a substance use disorder. Nash is terrified that his father’s inability to cope with the death of his wife in a car accident is a weakness that Nash has inherited: “It’s impossible to outrun your genes. We were made by flawed men. Those flaws don’t just dissolve out of the bloodline” (464). If so, Nash might also seek refuge in alcohol to handle pain. However, Duke is bent on recovery. His letter to his son makes it clear that he is committing to rehab and eager to make amends for Nash and Knox’s dark childhood. The novel ends this arc with a hopeful moment at Knox’s wedding: Duke, clean and sober and on his way to rehab, embraces his son.