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Wednesday, April 17, 2013

MICHELLE'S REVIEW: Crash by Lisa McMann

Title: Crash
Author: Lisa McMann
Format Acquired: Hardcover
Publication Date: January 8, 2013
Publishing House: Simon Pulse
ISBN: 9781442403918
Source of Copy: Purchased from Fully Booked

Summary:

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 vision.

Over and over, Jules sees a careening truck hit a building and explode... and nine body bags in the snow.

She has no idea why this is happening to her or if she's going crazy. It hardly matters, because the vision is everywhere - on billboards, television screens, windows - and she's the only one who can see it.

But it's not until the vision starts coming more frequently, and revealing more clues, that 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's she's been in love with for as long as she can remember.

(Image and information courtesy of Goodreads; Summary lifted from actual book)

Review:


Jules would really rather die than think that she's going crazy. One parent who's exhibiting the symptoms is enough, but it's not her fault that only she can see the repetitive visions plaguing her when she looks at innocuous billboard ads or television screens either. But when everyone grows increasingly concerned for Julie, she knows that she has to step up and do something to possibly save nine lives, including that of the boy she's loved for almost all her life.

Lisa McMann is one of the authors on my auto-buy. I have read all her books, save for Cryer's Cross (which I keep forgetting to pick up, oops). McMann is no stranger to exploring the premise of visions, as her Dream Catcher trilogy would testify. I actually quite liked Wake and seeing all the ratings on GoodReads definitely made it one of those love-it-or-hate-it books. With the Dream Catcher trilogy over, I was looking for a new book/series with visions playing a main theme. Granted that visions are pretty much a dime a dozen when it comes to the Young Adult genre, I was pretty much left unsatisfied most of the time, so when I read the summary of Crash, I was really looking forward to getting a copy. 

As per usual, McMann's characters draw you in the story. Her characters are entertaining and funny, and I actually laughed out loud at some of the parts. Jules' relationship with her brother, Trey, is cute, and it made me wish that I had a gay older brother too. The family component plays very strong and important roles here, and it's something that you find most of the time in contemporary books, and rarely in paranormal books. 

But when it came to the visions, I was kind of disappointed. I'm not entirely sure if I set too high a standard, or maybe I just imagined it differently, but by the next half of the book, I was pretty much hoping that the book would engage me again. Sure, some parts were still amusing, but I wasn't as gung-ho about reading it anymore. I read this in one sitting, so I'm sure that the different feel of the book wasn't because of my mood. I wanted less of kind-of-psycho Jules, and more of first-half-of-the-book-Jules. 

The ending didn't do any good to make me want to anticipate the next installment in the series either. If this were a standalone book, I thought it would make much more sense and possibly garner a higher rating from me. 


Rating:
             



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