Book Review: A Tiny White Light by Linda Bass

January 7, 2026

I was lucky enough to be given an advanced readers copy of this lovely book, just in time to read it for the new year. A lot of people really see the new year as a new start and a fresh step into the person that they want to be for the next year. January is also Mental Health Awareness Month, which is the perfect time for this memoir to come out. It will be available for purchase on the 20th of this month, from all the major booksellers such as Amazon, BAM, and Barnes & Noble.

We start Linda’s story as she is leaving small town Wisconsin life to move to L.A. with her family. We follow her through her loves and losses, through her marriages and becoming a mother, through losing her brother to suicide and through losing herself to mental illness.

This book is deeply heartbreaking and wildly vulnerable. Linda allows us to see the inside of her mind throughout the biggest moments in her life; through all the heartache and all the things that brought her hope. I will warn you, this book was quite hard to read at times. Linda has been through a lot in her life, and not all of it has been smooth and sweet. This book discusses suicide, mental illnesses, infidelity and unhealthy relationships, so if any of this is triggering to you, I would suggest not reading this book. Otherwise I suggest this book to anyone who wants to learn about life through another persons eyes. The last couple years I have really leaned into memoirs, which was a genre I previously did not care much for because I had really only read about uninteresting topics, but reading a memoir about someone who has experienced so much life and come out the other side with so much hope for her own future is a whole different story.

Reading about others lives and how they view the world is deeply valuable, and I think everyone should read at least one memoir a year, and if you are looking for the one to read in 2026, this is it. It is heartbreaking and full of heart.