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3.71 AVERAGE
3.71 AVERAGE
This book was awesome. It was such an interesting read. I could hardly put it down and got little accomplished today.
It's a weird ghost story about two dead spirits who fall in love. The protagonist, a 130-year old female spirit falls for an 85 year old male spirit, who happens to occupy the body of an 16-year-old stoner. It's a fabulous tale of two old souls (pun intended) who try to live and love in the modern world.
Apparently it's a YA fiction, which surprised me. Adults would enjoy this and the only teenage link was that the characters occupy teenage bodies.
It's my best read of the year, and I can say this since it's only January.
It had a fabulous opening line: Someone was looking at me, a disturbing sensation when you are dead.
It's a weird ghost story about two dead spirits who fall in love. The protagonist, a 130-year old female spirit falls for an 85 year old male spirit, who happens to occupy the body of an 16-year-old stoner. It's a fabulous tale of two old souls (pun intended) who try to live and love in the modern world.
Apparently it's a YA fiction, which surprised me. Adults would enjoy this and the only teenage link was that the characters occupy teenage bodies.
It's my best read of the year, and I can say this since it's only January.
It had a fabulous opening line: Someone was looking at me, a disturbing sensation when you are dead.
The beginning was slow and the ending felt rushed. Plot points were left unanswered. I wish there had been more development with certain side characters. More than anything, the premise was enticing but the execution fell flat. Despite these pitfalls, the novel ended with a satisfying (and tear inducing) conclusion. Not a book I would read again, but a book I'm glad to have read.
A spellbinding tale of the imagined afterlife, this lyrical, literary novel immediately propels the reader into a world where a nameless young female narrator exists as a ghost amid the daily existence of a high school. The constraints of this afterlife are perfectly described: while our narrator can see and hear, she is unable to affect or touch anything around her or remember details of her own past. The limited nature and horror of this existence come into stark relief when the narrator finds that at last, someone else is able to enter into her isolation and communicate with her. The subsequent quest to resolve her own identity and come to terms with her past and death will keep readers turning the pages as they empathize with her pursuit to express herself and find the meaning of her own existence in this afterlife.
Strongly developed characters and a gripping conclusion will help keep young adults entranced with the world of this novel, which could also easily be enjoyed by adult readers. Appealing mainly to girls, this ghost story also features a central romantic relationship and some non-graphic sexual scenes. Sensory details of daily existence which normally might be taken for granted are reconsidered in the contemplation of what it would mean to never experience them again, and the issues of mortality and the afterlife Whitcomb raises come to a satisfying conclusion.
Strongly developed characters and a gripping conclusion will help keep young adults entranced with the world of this novel, which could also easily be enjoyed by adult readers. Appealing mainly to girls, this ghost story also features a central romantic relationship and some non-graphic sexual scenes. Sensory details of daily existence which normally might be taken for granted are reconsidered in the contemplation of what it would mean to never experience them again, and the issues of mortality and the afterlife Whitcomb raises come to a satisfying conclusion.
After getting this at least twice a year from the library and always returning it unread, I finally bought a used copy and sat down to read it. I wasn't disappointed. A Certain Slant of Light is gorgeously written, the insights into James and Helen's characters as "Light" are so beautifully thought out and well written that you feel like you're just like them. As a Christian, someone that was raised in that kind of household I found myself relating to Jenny.. the need to get away. Over all I'm glad I finally read this.
Also. I love that the title is derived from an Emily Dickinson poem. She's my favorite poet... so I'm glad the book did the line justice.
Also. I love that the title is derived from an Emily Dickinson poem. She's my favorite poet... so I'm glad the book did the line justice.
'That I am your heart's secret fills me with song. I wish I could sing of you here in my cage. You are my heart's hidden poem. I reread you, memorize you every moment we're apart.'
This was a real shocker for me that I enjoyed it as much as I did. For one, this has been on and off my TBR shelf several times as I would occasionally decide that this is simply not for me and I have no plans to read it. But go figure a few months later it pops up on my Goodreads timeline, I take another glance and decide it may be worth a shot. Thanks, Wendy, for giving me that final push. :)
I was actually quite touched by Helen and James' relationship/connection (at least I was once I overlooked their questionable acts). Helen had been Light (a spirit) for well over a century and not once spoke to anyone that entire time and had never quite realized how desperately she craved the company of another. Their feelings for each other were instantaneous yet it thankfully managed to not feel akin to every other insta-love situation these days in YA literature. Helen and James have their own special situation and instead of calling it insta-love I would consider it more of an extreme fascination with one another as they are the only ones of their 'species' as they called it.
I know that I should have been repelled by the whole concept of human's walking around 'empty' just ripe for the taking for deceased spirits. That their soul can be absent, drifted off to a new place, while their body remains living its life. It really was a creepy concept/possibility but what honestly scared me the most were Jenny's religious extremist parents. Before Helen came along, she watched Jenny for some time as she simply went through the motions of life without exuding any sort of emotion. Being so constricted by your family, being forced to obey and follow such rigid rules, and forcing their religion into every facet of your very being? Now that's scary.
This is one of those books where the writing truly took my breath away. It flowed so beautifully and was a real delight. I loved how she kept Helen's speech true to form considering she wasn't from this day and age. That type of extra little touch really helped make this a very special book.
This is a novel about love but it's mostly about learning to forgive yourself for the very reason Helen and James were still on Earth to find each other was because they hadn't relived their final moments in order to forgive themselves for the actions they made. This was a wonderful, mature, YA novel with hints of romance, paranormal, and learning to find peace.
'Your mind will never lose anything forever that's worth keeping.'
This was a real shocker for me that I enjoyed it as much as I did. For one, this has been on and off my TBR shelf several times as I would occasionally decide that this is simply not for me and I have no plans to read it. But go figure a few months later it pops up on my Goodreads timeline, I take another glance and decide it may be worth a shot. Thanks, Wendy, for giving me that final push. :)
I was actually quite touched by Helen and James' relationship/connection (at least I was once I overlooked their questionable acts). Helen had been Light (a spirit) for well over a century and not once spoke to anyone that entire time and had never quite realized how desperately she craved the company of another. Their feelings for each other were instantaneous yet it thankfully managed to not feel akin to every other insta-love situation these days in YA literature. Helen and James have their own special situation and instead of calling it insta-love I would consider it more of an extreme fascination with one another as they are the only ones of their 'species' as they called it.
I know that I should have been repelled by the whole concept of human's walking around 'empty' just ripe for the taking for deceased spirits. That their soul can be absent, drifted off to a new place, while their body remains living its life. It really was a creepy concept/possibility but what honestly scared me the most were Jenny's religious extremist parents. Before Helen came along, she watched Jenny for some time as she simply went through the motions of life without exuding any sort of emotion. Being so constricted by your family, being forced to obey and follow such rigid rules, and forcing their religion into every facet of your very being? Now that's scary.
This is one of those books where the writing truly took my breath away. It flowed so beautifully and was a real delight. I loved how she kept Helen's speech true to form considering she wasn't from this day and age. That type of extra little touch really helped make this a very special book.
This is a novel about love but it's mostly about learning to forgive yourself for the very reason Helen and James were still on Earth to find each other was because they hadn't relived their final moments in order to forgive themselves for the actions they made. This was a wonderful, mature, YA novel with hints of romance, paranormal, and learning to find peace.
'Your mind will never lose anything forever that's worth keeping.'
This book definitely surprised me because I was expecting something that had ghosts in it to be more depressing. This book had its sad moments but it wasn't depressing at all. I really enjoyed Helen and I knew even though she thought she had done something terrible that it couldn't be too bad. She just didn't have that feeling to her.
It was very very sweet.
Spoiler
I also loved that she and James met and I felt so terrible that James had to abandon her when it was time to get Billy back in his body. I also felt terrible for Cathy and how she'd allowed him all this power and he turned around and betrayed her. I can't really explain why I enjoyed this book so much just that it sucked me in. And I absolutely loved the ending where Helen's daughter ended up greeting her and you find out she had this wonderful life.Spoiler
...It was very very sweet.
I loved this book! It was very interesting to here the story from a spirits pov. Makes you think differently about death and the afterlife.
Helen is a Light, or a spirit, that has benevolently haunted one person after another for 130 years. One day as she is in the classroom with her latest host, an English teacher, she is startled to notice that one of his students can see her.
She finds out that what she took for an ordinary teenage boy is actually a body that is being inhabited by another spirit named James. As James and Helen get to know each other and fall in love, they face the obvious problem of how to be together, since he has a body and she does not. This is solved when James shows Helen how to inhabit the empty but functional body of a teenage girl. Able to be together at last, James and Helen court in modern and old-fashioned ways, deal with their adolescent hosts' problems, and attempt to remember their past lives and the reason why neither of them can move on from Earth.
This was an interesting, if not wholly satisfying, story. Story lines were developed but not actually resolved, things were alluded to but never explained, and the ending felt very rushed to me. I give it credit for taking a different spin on the traditional paranormal love story.
She finds out that what she took for an ordinary teenage boy is actually a body that is being inhabited by another spirit named James. As James and Helen get to know each other and fall in love, they face the obvious problem of how to be together, since he has a body and she does not. This is solved when James shows Helen how to inhabit the empty but functional body of a teenage girl. Able to be together at last, James and Helen court in modern and old-fashioned ways, deal with their adolescent hosts' problems, and attempt to remember their past lives and the reason why neither of them can move on from Earth.
This was an interesting, if not wholly satisfying, story. Story lines were developed but not actually resolved, things were alluded to but never explained, and the ending felt very rushed to me. I give it credit for taking a different spin on the traditional paranormal love story.
Wow. I did not expect this book to captivate me as much as it did. I really went into it thinking it was going to be a cheesy love story. It was beautiful though. I loved all the characters even the horrible ones because of how well they were described. I was able to really imagine it all. The storyline was so unique and interesting! The ending also really packed a punch, i was in tears.