Review: Nobody

NOBODY
Jennifer Lynn Barnes
Paranormal Young Adult
400 pages
EgmontUSA
Available Now
Received from Media Masters Publicity for review

THE STORY (from Goodreads)
There are people in this world who are Nobody. No one sees them. No one notices them. They live their lives under the radar, forgotten as soon as you turn away.

That’s why they make the perfect assassins.

The Institute finds these people when they’re young and takes them away for training. But an untrained Nobody is a threat to their organization. And threats must be eliminated.

Sixteen-year-old Claire has been invisible her whole life, missed by the Institute’s monitoring. But now they’ve ID’ed her and send seventeen-year-old Nix to remove her. Yet the moment he lays eyes on her, he can’t make the hit. It’s as if Claire and Nix are the only people in the world for each other. And they are—because no one else ever notices them.

MY THOUGHTS
Nobody is a bit of a strange read, almost as though the story itself takes on the qualities of the Nobodies themselves, becoming something our minds can’t quite wrap themselves around and hovering in a sort of intangible state where we’re never clearly able to determine how we feel about it. A Nobody is someone who goes essentially unnoticed, taking up space but never truly filling it as not a single person around them recognizes they’re there; not truly invisible but for all intents and purposes, transparent just the same. Much the same way, we read Claire and Nix’s story with a kind of detachment, finding ourselves intrigued and fascinated by what’s unfolding chapter to chapter, but for some reason the events and characters themselves don’t quite brand themselves in our memories, and we’re able to move on to the next book without thoughts of Claire and Nix lingering.

Claire is someone we can’t help but like instantaneously, her inner monologue as she humorously despairs of her social invisibility both at home and school bringing a big smile to our faces. Once she meets Nix some of that humor slips away as the seriousness of her Nobody status is brought to her attention, but she remains a young woman who keeps a level head and approaches revelation after revelation with an admirable positivity and maturity. Though her attraction to Nix can be described as instant and powerful, the fact that she’s gone virtually unseen throughout her entire fifteen years in existence provides a believable explanation as to why finding someone whose eyes don’t simply focus somewhere over her shoulder is such a heady thing for her.

Nix is a bit harder to connect to, his brutal life as an assassin and pawn of a powerful society rendering him a shell of a human being, a strong and unbreakable carapace protecting a heart that by design and nurture is empty of love, compassion and feeling in general. He is simply his job until he meets Claire, and as his world is turned upside down, we have the pleasure of watching as Claire finds a tiny crack in that hard outer shell and begins to fill the empty spaces with all the affection and understanding they’ve both been denied for so long.

Overall, Nobody is an entertaining read, though those who like clear explanations for any paranormal abilities may find themselves a touch frustrated with the lack of information regarding Nobodies and Nulls. The romance, after the initial instant attraction, settles into something a bit more subtle, both Claire and Nix trying to navigate the heavily potholed road of young love, a road made all the more difficult given their deeply rooted loneliness and sense of unworthiness. The ending is neither wide open nor perfectly wrapped up, leaving us in the same kind of odd limbo we’ve been in throughout, everything about Nix, Claire and this world having a slightly blurry edge to it where no matter how long and hard we stare, nothing ever becomes perfectly clear.

Rating: 3.5/5

Review: Notes From Ghost Town

NOTES FROM GHOST TOWN
Kate Ellison
Paranormal young adult
336 pages
EgmontUSA
Available today!
Received from Media Masters Publicity for review

THE STORY (from Goodreads)
They say first love never dies...

From critically acclaimed author Kate Ellison comes a heartbreaking mystery of mental illness, unspoken love, and murder. When sixteen-year-old artist Olivia Tithe is visited by the ghost of her first love, Lucas Stern, it’s only through scattered images and notes left behind that she can unravel the mystery of his death.

There’s a catch: Olivia has gone colorblind, and there’s a good chance she’s losing her mind completely—just like her mother did. How else to explain seeing (and falling in love all over again with) someone who isn’t really there?

With the murder trial looming just nine days away, Olivia must follow her heart to the truth, no matter how painful. It’s the only way she can save herself.

MY THOUGHTS
Notes from Ghost Town is one of those reads that lets us know from the first page that our hearts are going bear a few new scars once it’s done with us, our knowledge of Stern’s death thanks to the synopsis and prologue made an even heavier burden to bear given he’s alive briefly in the first chapter. Those few precious moments with him–a young man full of color, life, and love for his best friend–makes the abrupt transition from life to death all the more painful, the color we could have sworn we saw on those few pages we spent with him suddenly a stark black, a haunting echo of Livie’s own colorblindness.

Livie is someone we come to care for instantaneously, her nervousness over the subtle changes taking place between her and Stern something we wrap around our shoulders to preserve heat and ward off the chill we know is coming. The Livie we find waiting for us just one chapter later and almost ten months after Stern's murder is a very different young woman, someone we stare at long and hard searching for remnants the sweet and nervous art lover we just embraced, but ultimately finding a grieving, angry and painfully lost little girl in her place. While it’s hard to bear witness to the continued downward spiral Stern’s death has caused, we more than understand her inability to control how her hurt escapes the tight lockdown she tries to keep on it, often erupting with more volatility in order to get past her vise like grip than it would if she simply released it on her own.

Though she often lashes out at any who dare get close to her, Livie never comes across as needlessly cruel or gets to the point where her anger pushes us away as it does those around her, instead her words and actions only have us opening our arms up wider in the hope she might find some comfort in them despite her fictional status. Behind the pain of a two-fold loss in both Stern and her mother, Livie is also dealing with the appearance of Stern’s ghost, something that seems for her to be the confirmation of a very real and profound fear that her mother’s mental illness is beginning to manifest in her. Just when it seems as though we can’t possibly bear any more darkness in Livie’s life however, Ms. Ellison grants us a bit of beauty and light thanks to Stern’s presence, however real or imagined, their time together heavy with words unspoken and promise unfulfilled, causing grateful tears to well in our eyes just to see them reunited even knowing it’s only for a short time.

In addition to a stunning relationship between two best friends who ran out of time to be anything more, Ms. Ellison gives us a truly engrossing murder mystery, the circumstances of Stern’s murder suspicious at best and growing more so with everything Livie learns as he guides her with cryptic memories. With romance (both of the ghostly and real-life variety), heartache, action, and complicated family dynamics, Notes from Ghost Town delivers on every possible level, and I cannot wait to get my hands on whatever Ms. Ellison writes next.

Rating: 4/5

Review: One Moment

ONE MOMENT

Kristina McBride
Contemporary Young Adult
272 pages
EgmontUSA
Available June 26th
Received through Teen Book Scene for review

THE STORY (from Goodreads)

This was supposed to be the best summer of Maggie’s life. Now it’s the one she’d do anything to forget.

Maggie Reynolds remembers hanging out at the gorge with her closest friends after a blowout party the night before. She remembers climbing the trail hand in hand with her perfect boyfriend, Joey. She remembers that last kiss, soft, lingering, and meant to reassure her. So why can’t she remember what happened in the moment before they were supposed to dive? Why was she left cowering at the top of the cliff, while Joey floated in the water below—dead?

As Maggie’s memories return in snatches, nothing seems to make sense. Why was Joey acting so strangely at the party? Where did he go after taking her home? And if Joey was keeping these secrets, what else was he hiding?

MY THOUGHTS

Based on the synopsis it’s not hard to predict the type of story One Moment will be, nor is it difficult to deduce Joey’s secrets long before Maggie figures them out, however, the overall predictability does not detract even the slightest from the rawness of Maggie’s pain as we're drawn into her sudden devastation with sure fingers wrapped around our hearts in an unrelenting grip. Joey’s death is just the beginning for Maggie, and though we can clearly guess what’s coming for her, the tension is almost greater as a result of our enlightenment when she remains so stubbornly in the dark, Joey’s secrets weighing on us as much as they do those around her who have knowledge of them. Each chapter eats at us, the tiny black letters on the pages morphing into predatory entities ravaging us mentally and emotionally until we’re laid wide open and feeling just as vulnerable as our protagonist.

Maggie is a fairly uncomplicated young woman, presenting us with little challenge in trying to read between her lines or analyze her every thought and action as we search for a darkness or extra layer that just isn’t there. She’s by no means a flat character, instead she seems so genuine from the very beginning that it’s beyond easy to project ourselves onto her, sliding seamlessly into her position as her entire foundation crumbles and she slowly but surely sifts through the pieces to build again with stronger materials. While her friends at times call her selfish for being so introverted after Joey’s death–seeming not to notice or acknowledge the pain of those around her–we as readers have a difficult time agreeing with that label, our time spent in Maggie’s head showing us clearly the chaos her mind is trying to manage and how strong her love for her friends is even when those friends are being less than honest with her.

When the truth finally comes out in its entirety and Maggie’s memories are restored to her in gut-wrenching detail, our respect for her grows exponentially as she shoulders the weight of the revelations when others would surely collapse under the strain. She cries, she yells, and she gets justifiably angry, and through it all we whisper in her ear words of encouragement to assure her she’s right in her feelings, a reassurance more for ourselves than for her given our hurt cuts as deep and our anger burns as bright despite our distance as readers from the events. We may technically be observers in this tale, but our hearts are as tangled in the mess Joey left behind as Maggie's is, and we read on wishing, however hopelessly, that she had the opportunity to get the answers from him she so rightfully deserves.

Overall One Moment is a tragic and painful story, but through it all we have a young woman in Maggie who opens her eyes wide after having them shuttered for so very long, and walking beside her as she copes with not only the loss of Joey himself, but also the loss of the love and trust that shattered on the rocks along with him, brings a smile to our faces despite our agony.

Rating: 4/5