Enchanting Review: Sight

SIGHT

ADRIENNE MARIA VRETTOS

Mystery YA

Simon & Schuster

ISBN# 978-1-4169-0657-5

254 pages

$16.99

Print – Available now

Rating: 3 Enchantments

Dylan is a psychic. She has visions of missing children that can help the police. Unfortunately, she usually sees the last moments of a child’s life, so when the child is found, he or she is dead. These haunting visions scare Dylan and emotionally scar her, so she doesn’t think about them unless she absolutely has to; not even her best friend Pilar is aware of Dylan’s psychic abilities.

Then Cate arrives in town, and Dylan finds herself revealing more of her secrets than she has ever before. But there’s something off about Cate that Dylan can’t place and probably doesn’t want to figure out. Cate is overeager to be accepted in Dylan’s hometown but her ways of going about doing this are undeniably odd. Dylan’s new friendship with Cate causes a rift in her long-standing friendship with Pilar, especially because of each friend’s unrevealed yet lurking secrets. But when Pilar’s little secret Grace disappears, Dylan realizes she has to embrace her sight to clear up all the mystery and save little Gracie’s life.

SIGHT starts off promisingly with an intriguing mystery and psychic visions to accompany it. However, the plot slows down after that and ends weakly; I was especially disappointed by the lukewarm climax. From the way the story started, I was expecting more dangerous encounters and frightening visions than I got. I’m not saying that the plot was bad; it just could’ve been written much better. There wasn’t much characterization, and I would’ve appreciated more development of Dylan’s character. It was difficult for me to connect with any of the characters, and I sometimes felt frustrated with them when I realized an important connection or clue long before they did. There was also a certain air of unreality about this story. It wasn’t Dylan’s psychic visions that caused this because those were actually one of the more plausibly aspects of this story. It was a mixture of the characters’ slowness in piecing together the mystery and the villain’s lack of motive. I couldn’t understand why many of the characters did what they did, and this confusion greatly diminished my enjoyment of the story. There might’ve been a deeper message in this story, but if there was, it was buried so deep I couldn’t find it. Overall, SIGHT was interesting but it didn’t live up to its full potential.

SIGHT is Adrienne Maria Vrettos’ second novel, her first being SKIN. You can visit her online at www.adriennemariavrettos.com

Rachael Stein

Enchanting Reviews

October 2008