Farsighted
by Emlyn Chand
Genre: fantasy, young adult, paranormal
Publication date: October 17th 2011
Pages: 260 (hardcover)
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SYNOPSIS: Alex Kosmitoras's life has never been easy. The only other student who will talk to him is the school bully, his parents are dead broke and insanely overprotective, and to complicate matters even more, he's blind. Just when he thinks he'll never have a shot at a normal life, an enticing new girl comes to their small Midwest town all the way from India. Simmi is smart, nice, and actually wants to be friends with Alex. Plus she smells like an Almond Joy bar. Sophomore year might not be so bad after all.
Unfortunately, Alex is in store for another new arrival—an unexpected and often embarrassing ability to "see" the future. Try as he may, Alex is unable to ignore his visions, especially when they suggest Simmi is in mortal danger. With the help of the mysterious psychic next door and friends who come bearing gifts of their own, Alex embarks on his journey to change the future.
THOUGHTS:
This book in a nutshell: This book has too much complexities and cannot be fathomed into a nutshell.
Okay okay, where to start? First off, here's what I liked about the book:
- The book was like a melting pot of cultures. The author mixed greek and indian culture really well. It was a very ambitious idea, but she pulled it off nicely.
- The book is very easy to read. The story was told in a male POV, written by a female author. It was believable 99.9% of the time.
- It's really hard to write about blind characters, because convincing the reader that the character is really visually impaired is quite a difficult task to do without visually impairing the reader in the process. I didn't feel visually impaired at all, and I saw the world through Alex's eyes without any problems, so two thumbs up to Emlyn!
- Lovely characters. You'll easily relate to them, and liking them is not hard at all. Alex was a black horse hero, and I liked that about him. He's the kind of guy any mom would be thrilled to have her daughter take home. Don't get me wrong though, he's hardly perfect and he has a lot of problems.
- And that is another thing that I like about this book. The characters are very human, none of them are described to be 'perfect' or anything like that. Each of them all had their own flaws and it was nice seeing them mature as the story went on.
- No super steamy scenes, just nice, clean, romance. Need I say more?
The only thing that I did not like was the pacing. It unnecessarily dragged on in some parts, and was too fast paced in all the wrong parts. It's all good though, because it didn't affect my reading experience much. But to be honest, sometimes I wanted to hit Alex on the hand with that walking stick of his for being so dense.
THE NUB AND GIST:
Great book with a unique plot. I just wish it didn't end like that, with the cliffhanger and all. I'm definitely looking forward to the next book!
