How the Light Gets In vs The quick and the dead: Which Should You Read?
Both live on shelves: Suburban life, Teenage Girls, Bildungsromans, Fiction
How the Light Gets In
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A powerful debut from an Australian novelist that features one of the most likeable but contrary figures you are likely to meet in contemporary fiction. Lou Connor, a gifted, unhappy sixteen-year-old, is desperate to…
The quick and the dead
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"Alice, Corvus, and Annabel, each a motherless child, are an unlikely circle of friends. One filled with convictions, another with loss, the third with a worldly pragmatism, they traverse an air-conditioned landscape…
Side by side
The verdict
- Readers rate How the Light Gets In highest: How the Light Gets In 4.2 · The quick and the dead 4.0.
- The quick and the dead has the widest readership — 7105 ratings behind its score.
Scores by source
| How the Light Gets In | The quick and the dead | |
|---|---|---|
| Goodreads | 4.2 (7084) | 4.0 (7105) |
| Hardcover | 4.4 (94) | 4.1 (9) |
| Apple Books | — | 3.0 (24) |
Reception
| How the Light Gets In | The quick and the dead | |
|---|---|---|
| Ratings | 7084 | 7105 |
| Editions | 10 | 5 |
| Citations | — | 1 |
| Film adaptations | 1 | 1 |
| Wikipedia attention | 28 | 492 |
| Pages | 329 | 308 |
Questions readers ask
Which is rated higher: How the Light Gets In or The quick and the dead?
How the Light Gets In has the higher combined reader rating across sources (How the Light Gets In 4.2/5, The quick and the dead 4.0/5).
Which is shorter to read: How the Light Gets In or The quick and the dead?
The quick and the dead is the quickest read. Estimated at 225 words per minute: The quick and the dead (308 pages, ≈ 5 h 42 m); How the Light Gets In (329 pages, ≈ 6 h 06 m).
Which is harder to read: How the Light Gets In or The quick and the dead?
Estimated difficulty, based on era, reader shelves and length — How the Light Gets In: Moderate; The quick and the dead: Moderate.