Pizza, premonition and pining
Genre: Y/A, Fantasy, Paranormal
No. of pages: 233
From Goodreads:
Jules lives with her family above their restaurant, which means she smells like pizza most of the time and drives their double-meatball-shaped food truck to school. It’s not a recipe for popularity, but she can handle that.
What she can’t handle is the recurring vision that haunts her. Over and over, Jules sees a careening truck hit a building and explode…and nine body bags in the snow.
The vision is everywhere—on billboards, television screens, windows—and she’s the only one who sees it. And the more she sees it, the more she sees. The vision is giving her clues, and soon Jules knows what she has to do. Because now she can see the face in one of the body bags, and it’s someone she knows. Someone she has been in love with for as long as she can remember.
After enjoying the Wake trilogy, I thought I’d give some other titles in Lisa McMann’s catalogue a try, and ‘Crash,’ the first in the Visions trilogy, surprised me.
Where some of the elements I did not like in ‘Fade,’ ‘Wake’ and ‘Gone’ were left behind, like the swearing and slang, ‘Crash’ was less grittier, the narrative had an ease that let me settle into Jules’ world, and I loved the premise of precognition and trying to stave off foretold events.
While this is far from an original storyline, I nonetheless enjoyed it immensely. I laughed and cried (so many surprise feels) with such a light-hearted narrative after the seriousness of Janie and Cabel in the Wake trilogy.
I drew issue around Jules’ visions though – it’s one thing to have them; another to be able to stop, rewind and pause them like a video tape. That part had me going hmmmm…
Even though this is a short novel, I did feel that the build up to the climax was a little slow – whether the tension dropped off in places, or there was too much contemplation, I haven’t quite decided upon, but I only mention it because I remember feeling ‘hurry up and get to the good stuff already’ once or twice. I’m so impatient :p
I liked the Romeo and Juliet-esque aspect to Jules and Sawyers relationship, and how her visions makes it even more complicated.
While there were no surprises in the overall plot, I got great delight from the wit and sub plot reveals, for some reason after reading the Wake trilogy it wasn’t something I expected – glad I was wrong.
Obviously targeted for the teen market, but a great simple, guilty pleasure read for the older demographic. I completed it in one sitting – a great way to unwind after a big morning completing household chores.
Overall feeling: Pretty cool.
© Casey Carlisle 2015. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Casey Carlisle with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.
Casey Carlisle 