Glimpse

Glimpse

Stacy Wallace Benefiel

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You know what happens when your parents kidnap you and force you to stay in a rolling box (ok, motorhome) for seven days driving from home, a large city in southern Cali, to a rural town in Wyoming? You read and write a lot. And sleep, that too. Don’t get me wrong, Wyoming is beautiful, but the ten hours of driving through desert gets more than monotonous. Unfortunately for me, I did not bring a good book that I could get into. So I decided to try a free book on my Itunes. I will say this, there is a good reason a lot of those books are free.

            Well, now that I’ve finished that completely unnecessary rant, the free book I got on my phone from Itunes was Glimpse by Stacy Wallace Benefiel. The story is about teenager Hazel (Zellie) Wells who is desperately in love with a boy named Avery Adams in her grade, but is pretty sure he doesn’t even know she exists. But naturally he feels exactly the same way. That is a big problem with this story, it is entirely too predictable and unrealistic. One thing I completely hate in stories is when the main character seems to be who the author wishes she could be. This read like that. Zellie and Avery instantly fall madly in love with each other (within, like, a matter of hours) but then their parents are against their relationship. It goes a little Romeo and Juliet with them defying their parents to be together but that is short lived because the real twist of the story is Zellie has a vision of Avery’s death the first time they have contact.

            She tells no one of these visions but soon finds out they are hereditary from her mother and grandmother. From then Zellie must go on a short, anticlimactic mini-adventure with her best friend Claire and younger sister Melody to discover her full powers and prevent Avery and her parents from thinking she is a freak. I’ll let you guess the ending.

            Some major problems with this story: A lack of character development. In fact, the characters seem to develop backwards, or switch personalities entirely. Zellie is supposed to be shy, a bit awkward, and average. Suddenly, she transforms into a confident girlfriend, superhero type character. Claire is supposed to be confident, the girl who has things go her way, but in the end she is the one almost ruining everything, and Melody is supposed to be the annoying younger sister but she turns into an overly-caring, responsible character for Zellie to lean on. Another problem with this story: the acceptance of the psychic gene. The whole story is set in a small town and Zellie’s father is the pastor of the church. And most of the characters are completely okay with this magical force that contradicts their religion. One last problem: the ending. I won’t spoil it for you, but if you read it, you will understand how terribly disturbing and unrealistic it is. Honestly I’m not sure how I finished this book, I was pretty desperate after staring at the same looking mountains, but this book was not worth the time. As I said in previous posts, I am a firm believe in forming your own opinion, so check it out if you want, you may appreciate what I couldn’t. 1 pearl.

XOXO

Kenna-lee