Hold Your Breath by Caroline Green

Hold Your Breath by Caroline Green
Buy Hold Your Breath by Caroline Green at Amazon.co.uk or Amazon.com
Category: Teens
Reviewer: Robert James
Summary: Atmospheric start to this mystery thriller gives way to a dreadful ending which spoiled the book for me.
Buy? Maybe	Borrow? Maybe
Pages: 240	Date: June 2013
Publisher: Piccadilly Press
External links: Author's website
ISBN: 978-1848121706
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Tara can locate lost objects - keys, phones, and even people. But she knows that this strange ability can bring trouble, so when bully Melodie Stone goes missing, she wants to keep her visions to herself. The images she sees won't go away, though - should she risk humiliation, or worse, by trying to find her?

One of the hottest trends at the moment seems to be a mixture of contemporary and paranormal, with slight paranormal aspects present in otherwise a 'standard' contemporary novel. For other examples, look at the voodoo elements of Shipwrecked by Siobhan Curham and the element introduced towards the end of Burn for Burn by Jenny Hand and Siobhan Vivian. In this one, it's Tara's gift, in a similar way to Vee's 'sliding' in Slide by Jill Hathaway. It has the potential to be an intriguing read - but fell short for me.

I think the issue with books like this is that it can be very easy for them to seem completely ridiculous. If things aren't handled just right, the paranormal aspect seems jarring, or the non-paranormal scenes can seem weak. Here, it's the lack of believable characters which causes a problem for me. I found the eventual solution to the mystery to be a bizarre one which relied on too many people acting in incredibly strange ways, and it really detracted from my enjoyment of the book.

This is a shame, as there's a fair bit of it which made me think that Green might be an author I'd enjoy. The start is a bit slow, but the atmosphere is built up very well, and I thought the chemistry between Tara and her love interest was good. Additionally, the revelation about why Tara was so keen to avoid using her ability was handled well. I wouldn't necessarily recommend this one, but I'd probably take another look at more from Caroline Green in the future.

I think my favourite mix of contemporary and paranormal so far this year is the breathtakingly bizarre, but brilliant, Dance of Shadows by Yelena Black.

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