Terri R. (emeraldmagick) reviewed on 1/5/2015 + 31 more book reviews

A beautiful and hauntingly written story... Not your usual love story really but a lovely one in its own way.

"Someone was looking at me, a disturbing sensation if you're dead. I was with my teacher, Mr. Brown. As usual, we were in our classroom, that safe and wooden-walled box-- the windows opening onto the grassy field to the west, the fading flag standing in the chalk dust corner, the television mounted above the bulletin board like a sleeping eye, and Mr. Brown's princely table keeping watch over a regiment of student desks."

So starts the story of James and Helen, two displaced souls who inhabit the bodies of Billy and Jenny whose souls have "emptied " their souls from their bodies. James and Helen share a unique connection, being "Light" and are drawn to each other. The bodies they haven chosen are from different sides of the tracks and each come with their own sets of issues and baggage.

James and Helen's love/relationship did happen fast, but it didn't feel rushed to me at all really, their shared loneliness brought them together and helped them start to build a bond.

Jenny's house had a creepy atmosphere hanging over it, I sympathized with Cathy and Jenny, living in that house. Dan wasn't an evil person but with some issues...

Billy's circumstances weren't ideal either, parents not in the picture and an older brother doing his best to take care of him and keep him out of trouble.

Helen and James don't have the memories of their hosts so they have no idea what happened in the past before, to paraphrase James "what will come back to bite them."

However, they slowly gain memories from their own pasts... bits and pieces, though Helen is more afraid of the answers she will find.

It isn't a completely compelling story that I HAD to know what happens next, but it had a pull on me that drew me in bit by bit, building everything up and letting me get to know the world everyone inhabited. The writing was, to possibly overuse a word I have used before, beautiful... and delicate of sorts. You could feel the tragedy and uncertainty hiding behind every word and action... one wrong breath is all it would take to bring it all crashing down.

When James and Helen remember their final moments, well... I won't spoil it but I was glad to see the picture come together for them.

One of my favorite quotes from it:

The library smells like old books a thousand leather doorways into other worlds. I hear silence, like the mind of God. I feel a presence in the empty chair beside me. The librarian watches me suspiciously. But the library is a sacred place, and I sit with the patron saint of readers. Pulsing goddess light moves through me for one moment like a glimpse of eternity instantly forgotten. She is gone. I smell mold, I hear the clock ticking, I see an empty chair. Ask me now and I'll say this is just a place where you can't play music or eat. She's gone. The library sucks.

and another:
I couldn't take my eyes off him. Like a desert wanderer afraid of mirages, I gazed at my oasis, but he was real.

As his flesh touched my spirit, the feeling of falling turned into a feeling of flying. I was soaring through time toward him.


This a novel to savor, a wonderful debut :)

Happy reading!

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