Book Club and Discussion Guide for THIS MOTH SAW BRIGHTNESS
Why is THIS MOTH SAW BRIGHTNESS one of the best book club books of 2025?
Looking for something easy to read but hard to agree on? If your book club is looking for a novel that sparks real conversation, This Moth Saw Brightness is a great pick. Fast-paced and darkly funny, it’s an engaging read packed with deeper, often unsettling questions that linger long after the last page.
Here’s what makes it book club-worthy:
Expect strong opinions. The novel’s tendency towards ambiguity, morally gray characters, and weirdly compelling structure (including some bold craft choices) are designed to provoke disagreement in the best possible way.
Timely themes – Mental health, neurodivergence, institutional power, and who gets to be considered fully human. The current day relevance will make it easy for readers to bring in personal perspectives and real-world connections.
Genre-bending – The internet can’t decide on whether this book is a thriller, romance, mystery, sci-fi, or speculative satire. Maybe your book club can figure it out?
Different entry points – Come at it politically, emotionally, philosophically—Whether your group leans political, emotional, or philosophical, or likes to talk about writing craft, there’s a lens for everyone.
Craft choices some may love to hate – The structure is weird. Someone will hate it. Everyone will love to discuss it.
Ambiguity even on what’s ambiguous – No clear answers. Lots of clear questions.
Morally slippery characters – Complex people all trying their hardest, to varying degrees of success.
Fast pacing, plenty of white space – Even the busy readers will finish in time.
Suitable for multi-generational book clubs— While published as a young adult novel, the sophisticated concepts and nuanced themes will appeal to adult book clubs as well.
An unforgettable ending – The kind that will haunt your book club’s text chain.
Discussion questions
Why do you think these parts of American History aren’t typically included in this country’s narrative? Do you think they should be? Why/why not?
The footnotes are tonally different from the rest of the novel. What effect did this have for you?
D’s mental health, and whether he too is neurodivergent, are left unclear. What assumptions did you make about him? What effect did the lack of clarity have on your reading experience?
Jane battles with the desire to love humanity while also believing humanity might have some inherently terrible tendencies. Which side of her do you think is winning? Where do you think she’ll end up on this continuum after this study? As she grows up?
A moth “seeing” brightness can have both good and terrible connotations. Why might this have been the choice of title for this story?
The “author” mentions that how you choose to end the book depends on whose story you believe it to be. Whose story do you believe it to be? Who else’s story might it be, and, which ending goes with each?
Naomi’s articles/interviews often touch on what we do and don’t understand about what’s happening now. What do the voices disagree on? How do the themes these interviews bring up—either individually or as a whole—relate to the themes in the rest of the story? What are differences between what these voices say individually versus what they say when taken as a collective group that represents a country?
What do you think the study was about? Why?
Do you think the kids were onto something real, or chasing a conspiracy theory?
We live in a time period where conspiracies and theories about them run wild and control much of what people think or do. Often times, there is no way to know the Truth. In one of Naomi’s final interviews, the speaker says that “growing up is …* world bigger than you.” Which of the characters, if any, did you think most reached this point? Do you think this represents the character that is the most “grown up”?
How might a reader’s takeaway be changed if the story had a tidier ending? (E.g. If you learned what the study was about, and whether it was “good” or “bad”? If the mystery was “solved”? If you knew whether D was changed or not?)
How would you have ended it and why?
Like many things in this book, the question of whether D is actually changed by the pills is left unanswered. This ambiguity allows the question: how much can a person change and still be “themselves”? What do you think it means to be “yourself”? Does D change from beginning to end?
In many ways, Kermit’s character conflicts with ‘Wayne’s. What do you think makes them friends? Why does their friendship work? (Or doesn’t it?)
The Mary Oliver poem quoted in the beginning says “I was always running around looking at more and more.” How does this relate to the book? Who in this book is looking for more and more? And what is that more? How does it relate to people in our modern times?
The poem goes on to say that if “I stopped, the pain was unbearable.” Do you think this is true of any of the characters in this book—that if they stopped keeping busy all of the time, the pain would be unbearable? What pain would they feel?
Much of the location and the world is slightly askew—it’s not quite Baltimore, and most of the adult characters aren’t quite believable. What effect does this have on the story? What effect does it have on your reading experience?
Towards the end of the book, Jane interrupts the narrative and inserts her own thoughts several times. She even disagrees with the primary narrator, ‘Wayne. Why might she do this? When she says this isn’t her story, do you agree with her?
In Brechtian theater, breaking the fourth wall was a device that was meant to prevent the audience from ever fully forgetting that they were watching a work of fiction. What devices does this book use to mimic that technique? Does it successfully achieve this effect—or were you able to entirely “escape” into the fictional plot? What effect would keeping the reader distant have on their experience?