Oddly, "The Northern Light" seems but a skeleton Cronin novel. Obviously this able and experienced writer has observed the problems of a provincial newspaper … so that he knows what occasionally happens to them when somebody wants to acquire them. Furthermore, his characters are credible, even when their creator is most sentimental about them. But the richness of detail, the solidly woven warp and woof of living that have been so typically Cronin in previous novels, are wanting from "The Northern Light." Here is what might be called a dwarf specimen of a species that is typically larger and more luxuriant in habit.

Peter Girvin, "But the Paper Came Out," in The New York Times Book Review, May 25, 1958, p. 5.