Monday, April 9, 2012

Another Review: The Gift by Andrea J. Buchanan


The Gift by Andrea J. Buchanan

A librarian’s review

Spoiler Alert**

The Gift is a paranormal story about three friends who begin to have encounters with a ghost who calls himself Patrick.  At the same time, two of the friends begin having the same dream about previous lives.  They learn that all three of them were friends in a past life.  The dreams are violent and scary, but drive the story forward.  The main character, Daisy, has special electrical powers and has learned to control them throughout her life.  The second character, Vivi is a shell of a girl who has had contact with Patrick since she was a child.  The third friend is Danielle, and she doesn’t really have any powers or ghostly contacts.  This makes her jealous and leads to problems between her and her friends.  Daisy has a love interest named Kevin who also has issues, but his are more normal, epilepsy.   The ghost, Patrick, is able to feed off Daisy’s electrical energy and allows him to possess one of the girls.  He wants to possess Vivi, since he’s been grooming her for her entire life, but Danielle is so jealous that she makes an easier and stronger target so he ends up possessing her.   Long story short, the girls find out that the ghost was actually murdered during their past lives and he’s there to take his revenge on Daisy who killed him in his previous life.   I won’t tell you more about how it ends, but it’s a decent read.  I enjoyed the book and it kept my attention from the beginning.  There were parts of the book that were predictable, but that didn’t ruin it.  The only part I had a bit of a problem with was at the end when Kevin was suddenly able to communicate telepathically with Daisy.  I wish the author would have explained that part a little more.   This one will be popular and will circulate well.  I’ll be ordering it for my library and, as for a rating, I would give it a 3.5.