Review: Perilous Prequel
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 02 6, 2013
Wow, how to begin. In this prequel to The book, Touching Smoke, We get to see how Isaiah and Amalie came to be. Their history, their past, their lives. It's brutal and beautiful at the same time. Amalie's mother was special and so is Amalie, unfortunately Amalie's father sees her gift as a mental illness and is consumed with finding a way to make it disappear. Isaiah is an orphan boy that her father picked out of the gutter as a child, brought home, and raised. Isaiah is completely loyal to Garrison, believing he only does what is needed to help people. Isaiah loves Amalie and she loves him, when Isaiah is away at school things tend to spiral for her. In the course of trying to cure Amalie, her father subjects her to emotional and physical abuse that borders on grotesque, the scariest thing is that he truly believes he is helping her. "She was a weed struggling through cracks of concrete, unwanted, undesired, crushed and abused under trampling feet." He is not her only abuser, it seems there is no place for her to hide from potential attack, she is at the complete mercy of her abusers. Confined to her room, there is no place to run or hide. She is a shell of a girl and can barely function after what has been done to her. Isaiah is back and this time, he is here to stay. He wants to find out what is happening to Amalie, but in doing so, he is going to find out so much more than he bargained for, things he almost can't mentally deal with. The guilt and anguish may be too much for him to bear. This book is brutal, dark, sad, lovely, all of these things, in a necessary way, you need to know this history and abuse to understand the characters. I was completely absorbed in the story from page one and didn't put it down until finished. Their love story, family dynamics, and the cruelty endured by the characters is mind boggling to say the least. Having said that, I wouldn't recommend this to very young tweens. This is a must read book by a very talented author. The only negative thing that I have to say is, "Now I have to wait for the next book." Go buy it now, it is fantastic.