Saturday, October 31, 2015

Death and the Girl Next Door by Darynda Jones


Lorelai has lived in a small New Mexico town with her grandparents since her parents' disappearance ten years earlier. She has been leading an essentially ordinary life, except for her unpredictable talent to occasionally see visions after touching someone. However, things are starting to get complicated starting with the arrival of a new student, Jared Kovach, who calls up bizarre visions when he and Lorelai bump into each another. Even stranger, he and another student - Cameron Lusk - have an instant, mutual hatred. Cameron has always been a loner, but once Jared shows up, he suddenly takes an interest in Lorelai, bordering on stalking. Lorelai has no clue what's going on; all she wants is to be normal, but her life is about to change forever.

This is the first book in the Darklight trilogy, followed by Death, Doom, and Detention and Death and the Girl he Loves.

I thought this series was really interesting and I enjoyed it more than I expected. Although some of the bits at the very beginning seemed predictable, the overall story and how everything plays out was much more complex. The characters were also well developed and it was easy to sympathize with Lorelai, particularly later in the series. There was one small temporal discrepancy near the end of the series that I found annoying, but not enough to ruin the books for me; I was mostly just disappointed that the story was over once I finished reading the last book. I would recommend this to fantasy fans who enjoy books about the real world, "good vs. evil," and stories that are focused more on talents rather than "magic."

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