Review of Illusion by Frank Peretti

Illusion by Frank Peretti

Howard Books - March 6, 2012

http://frankperetti.com/

Facebook: No 

Twitter:  @Frankenbarb

Source: Libby Reed from Howard Books for Review

Read what this book is about here.          
   My first response after finishing Illusion was “Dude that was awesome!” What an amazing ride and great re-meeting with one of the most prolific writers of my time. Before I really get to my review, I have to make a confession. This review is completely biased because I am a huge Peretti fan and I will always read whatever he writes. Whatever he writes. He truly is a storytelling guru. I have been waiting –sometimes patiently and sometimes not - for his next book. When given the opportunity to review Illusion, I literally jumped for the chance. (No it wasn’t a requirement, but I couldn’t contain my excitement.) I danced a crazy jig when I came home to the package sitting on my porch. It was moved immediately to the top of my reading list. I am not trying to offend any other authors or anything, but Peretti has a special place in my heart. I was introduced to him at the beginning of my high school career, at a time when I could have given up on reading. Instead, Peretti pulled me into his world book after book, and I have not been the same since.  Okay… moving on…

            Illusion is not your typical Peretti book, and for me that makes it even better. Some fans will not appreciate the change, but I think it marks growth as a writer and that should be much appreciated.  Going back to the beginning, Peretti has covered subjects such as spiritual warfare, false prophets and the myths of Bigfoot. In Illusion, he tackles the discoveries of science and the possibilities that will come from that. Dane and Mandy is a beautiful and tragic story. It is simultaneously a hurting man reaching out for one last glimpse of the love of his life and a scientist whose experiment spiraled out of control. There is always that unspoken question of is he crazy and grasping for the last hope or is it really happening. Science can be a beautiful thing, but as always, when man twists it for his own purposes something horrible happens.

            I immensely enjoyed reading Illusion; there is nothing that I can say that will capture everything that I feel about this book, and about Peretti himself. He is an author that always amazes me and the only thing I can do is sit back in awe of the masterful piece that has sprung from his fingertips. I enjoyed the glimpse into the heart and soul of Dane and Mandy. I love the fact that even though what has happened was a grown man’s science experiment gone wrong, science is still respected. Sometimes humans go further than they should, challenging boundaries and the scope of their capabilities. Science tends to always lay any moral reservation until a fatal mistake is made. But it is the redeeming quality of Illusion that even in the most tense and dire situations, there is a way out. Yes, it is not your typical story, but it is still captivating and skillfully written. I can only hope that there will not be such a long wait for Peretti’s next book.

A copy of this book was given to me, free of charge, in exchange of my honest review. 

 

Always Shine, 

Starr K

Nancy Holder's Possessions

Possessions

This is the final one I forgot about, again I am truly sorry. 

Possessions by Nancy Holder

Book 1 of the Possessions series

Razorbill –September 3, 2009

www.nancyholder.com

Facebook: Yes

Rating: Absolutely loved it!!

Recommendations: YA fans, ghost stories, boarding school stories.

Lindsay has started Marlwood in the middle of the first semester. On her first day she manages to witness a strange ritual that she’s pretty sure she wasn’t supposed to see, irritate Dr. Ehrlenbach by not dressing appropriately. But she soon learns that this is the least of her problems. She wanted to come to Marlwood to leave the tragic events of her life and the vivid memory of her breakdown in the past, for a chance to reinvent herself. But she finds that hard to do when she is pulled into the popular crowd as a way to keep an eye on her roommate, who may be the only friend she has at school. Mandy, the leader of the popular crowd, insists on doing pranks as a way to initiate girls into the exclusive group. But the pranks become dangerous and the in-crowd becomes weirder. In her attempt to protect Julie, her roommate, she uncovers some secrets that will only convince people that she’s the one who’s crazy and manages to create a rift in her friendship. Lindsay isn’t sure she’s not the one going crazy when she starts to see a mysterious ghostly face in the reflections of mirrors and shower stalls, and when she starts to smell and hear things from events that had to happen in the past. But things don’t calm down, they escalate to the death of one of the popular kids; the same one that was trying to talk to –warn- Lindsay. Troy, Mandy’s boyfriend-soon to be ex-comes up missing.  To top off all the weirdness of her first semester at Marlwood, the ghostly face that followed Lindsay around campus has now followed her home.

This is a well-crafted ghost story that will have you jumping at all the things that go bump in the night, the strange images that your mind will create in the shadows around you. And the only thing you can do is let go and enjoy the scare. There are things that irritate me bout this book-but in the most positive way possible. The main thing is that you, as the reader, don’t know what’s going on. Nancy doesn’t give anything away, so at times I found myself getting freaked out. The entire story is told through the eyes of Lindsay, so there is nothing that you know that she doesn’t. In the back of my head I kept wondering what was really going on; either Mandy and the popular crowd were cruel and really going to great lengths just to scare people. Mandy seems to have the money to do just that, but there was nothing in the book that supported the idea that Mandy was behind the weirdness. In fact the more that I read, there wasn’t any real evidence that Mandy was even aware of the things that were going on that she didn’t directly control. Yes, she was participating in it, and she may have even initiated contact with the spirit world. But at some point, the spirits started taking over. Not knowing exactly what was going on, only made it that much easier for Holder to play on instinctual fears.

Though this part of the story ended in a way that absolutely irritates me , I have to admit that it absolutely works for this and it may have done more damage if a resolution was  forced into it. So my advice if you can’t stand for books to just stop, then get all three books together and read them straight through. ( I am not sure if there are only three or if there will be more. This is the first one and I didn’t get them altogether.) But the ending was a resting point for both Lindsay and the reader (at least it was for me). It’s the rest that comes when you’ve been scared to death and you need to take the time to relax and catch your breath, slow your heart down before it jumps out of your chest. Your mind is left with questions swirling around in your head and you find yourself wondering if you really just read what you did. The same feeling that Lindsay is left with as the story ends in this book. If I had been told that this book had a very open-ended conclusion before I started reading, I would have passed on reading it. ( I need closure in real life as well as in the fictional world.) But I would have missed out on something that has become my favorite read of the summer so far. I can only imagine what it would have been like to read this during Halloween.

Always Shine,

Starr K.