Sarah Barnard

This SF novella concerns a teenage girl, Sage, who is rescued from a fatal car crash, caused by her drunk driving, by aliens. It turns out that they are monitoring the planet as it is the seat of a Gaia-like consciousness formed by the complexity of the wide variety of life on earth, and that they have rescued Sage as she is the only living being on Earth who can tap into that consciousness and thereby help Gaia to reduce the suffering and exploitation caused by humanity. It's an interesting, if not particularly original theme, though I found the author's writing fairly mediocre and I doubt that I will be reading any further books in the series of which this is inevitably the first part. 2.5/5… (meer)

Two years have passed since Sam mysteriously disappeared, leaving nothing behind except for her car that was found near an old oak tree. No one knew where she had gone, and all that was found was a set of footprints that led to the tree and disappeared. Kate, a friend who had been babysitting Sam’s kids on the night of her disappearance, had taken on guardianship of Sam’s children. Years had passed, but Kate and the kids didn’t give up hope that one day Sam would return, and then, one day, she did.

Their first encounter was cryptic, but Sam told Kate to meet her near the old oak tree. With her friend Lily watching the kids, Kate heads to the oak. Sam appears from the tree, followed closely by a beast that Kate doesn’t recognize. After a successful escape, Sam explains that she had gone through the portal on that fateful night, and had just managed to escape. The return home was a happy but incredibly awkward one, followed by a length of time trying to reacclimatize to life. The worst isn’t over yet though, as the beast from the tree is still after Sam, as is the man who sent it. They don’t want to wait around for him to come to them though, and risk endangering the children. They’ll have to go through the portal and face him!

My main contention with the plot of this book was the complete and total lack of official follow up. A woman went missing for two years and suddenly reappeared, and the only person who cares is the social worker? Where are the police? I find it hard to believe that they wouldn’t want to question Sam relentlessly as to where she had been for the last two years… And no one they came into contact with seemed terribly unsettled by her sudden reappearance. This woman mysteriously vanished, and when encountering people she knew, such as Kate’s ex, no questions were asked! The end drives me nuts for similar reasons… I don’t want to give anything away, so suffice it to say that apparently in the England that Barnard has written, people can vanish for extensive periods of time whenever they want and the authorities accept it with no questions asked.

There were other points in the plot that were poorly explained as well. One point which stood out to me was when Lily was looking at an orb that was made by Sam and she said, “Oh! Well that’s interesting!” which would indicate to the reader that she realized something. Unfortunately, you never clearly find out what that realization was. I can toss out a theory or two, but I was left wondering. Another thing which confused me was how long Sam was actually gone. She thought only a few days would pass in our world in the time she was in the other, but never indicated how long she had actually been there for. I’m assuming it was a long time, since she seemed to have lost all of her social skills and looked a bit haggard. She also mentions at one point towards the end that she’ll explain what had happened to her in the other world, but never does.

Overall, the characters are well written, although at times I was confused as to what children belonged to which mother. The book is part of a developing series, so hopefully there will be further explanation regarding why Kate and Sam, two seemingly normal women, possess this power that allows them to access the other world. I wasn’t too keen on the character relationships that were developed. This was one of those books that would have been exactly the same story even without the development of a relationship between the main characters, therefore making the relationship completely pointless. In cases like this one, it seems as though the author really just wanted to include some sex in the story purely for the sake of getting to write about it, and not as a means of adding to the storyline.

Overall, this story had some gaping holes in the plot and a slew of confusing and unnecessary plot elements. The pace was slow (how many times do we really have to sit through tea time and breakfast in a single book?) and the ending was fairly anticlimactic. The concept of this book has potential, but all in all I’d say this effort was a flop…… (meer)

Rating: 2 - It was just ok

This is another book that took me longer to read than it should have because I just wasn’t pulled through it. I picked it up, put it down…picked it up, put it down. I can’t really say “I liked it”. It was really just an “okay” read for me.

My main issue with this story is that nothing exciting or portal-related happens for half the book. There is a short scene near the beginning when Sam comes back through the Portal, but after that there is really no portal or alternate realm action at all. It is referenced occasionally but the bulk of the first half of the book revolves around domestic life -- dealing with the kids, dealing with Sam’s injury and hospital stay, dealing with social workers, making soup, going shopping, the relationships between Kate, Sam, and Lily including intimate relationships (I’ll get to that in a minute), preparing for the holidays, etc…and a lot of tea making. I thought I was reading domestic-lit rather than a paranormal fantasy.

This leads me to the next issue. There seemed to be a lot of information that is left out, left up to the reader to figure out, or lack of appropriate response. For example, Sam comes back through a magical portal after being gone for 2 years and nobody sits her down and asks her what happened? How did you disappear? Where did you go? What happened there? How did you get back? And then there is Lily. She is eventually revealed to be more than she appears to be and when she and Kate go through the portal to get her daughter (there’s another issue I’ll get to) when they get back nobody ever says, Who are you? What are you? Why are you here? Where did you come from? Some of this is explained near the end but not much and it should have been addressed earlier in the book. All the weird stuff going on just seems to be taken in stride with maybe a little “confusion” but otherwise no great concern.

Back to Kate’s daughter -- if your little girl was just pulled into a portal to another world by a big, scaly, mean, demon thing, wouldn’t you be freaking out? I would! But Kate seems to be pretty controlled about it. Lily goes through the portal after Hayley so does she just assume Lily will take care of her until she finds a way to get through herself? Lily and Kate's trip through the portal is the first glimpse we get of the other side.

Another thing that took me a little by surprise is the lesbian relationship between Sam and Kate and another two I can’t mention without a spoiler. It wasn't a problem but I could not find any description, tag, label, category, or review that even hints at this so it was an unexpected element. It is very low-key and I would call the heat level “sweet” as it was practically non-existent, but it was definitely there. This does not affect my rating but I thought it should be mentioned since it isn’t anywhere else.

The second half of the book has more action involving the portal but still quite a bit of the “domestic-lit”. By the time Lily and Sam go back through the portal to face Ametsam I had lost a lot of interest in the story and Sam’s sudden magical abilities were another source of confusion. The book also seemed to end a bit abruptly, more like the end of a chapter than the end of a book.

With all that said, I don’t think the writing was bad; it just didn't keep my interest. I needed more to happen in the first half of the story to pull me through and support what was going on in the second half of the book.

If you like a paranormal story with a good dose of action at regular intervals throughout the story to keep you interested, then this book is probably not for you. However, if you like stories more about family and relationships and domestic life with some fantastical action thrown in eventually, then you might like this one. I tend to lean toward the former.

http://indieparanormalbooksreviews.blogspot.com/… (meer)