Clarity by Kim Harrington
| Clarity by Kim Harrington | |
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| Category: Teens | |
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Reviewer: Loralei Haylock
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| Summary: Fairly standard fare for a Teen paranormal story, though it's entertaining enough to keep pages turning, and won't disappoint fans of the genre. A perfect beach read. | |
| Buy? Maybe | Borrow? Yes |
| Pages: 256 | Date: June 2012 |
| Publisher: Scholastic | |
| External links: Author's website | |
| ISBN: 978-1407130859 | |
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The tourist season at Cape Cod is about to start and for Clarity 'Clare' Fern and her family, this is really important. Clare's family are psychic, not the phoney kind who take your money and give you a false prediction about tall dark strangers - the genuine kind. Clare's mother can read minds, her brother Perry can talk to the dead, and Clare can see memories linked to objects. Their family business is entertaining the tourists, and the summer rush pays the winter bills.
But Clare has two problems. One, a phoney psychic has set up business in a prime spot in town - and is stealing all the business because she claims to tell the future. Clare knows no one can tell the future, but try telling the tourists that.
Two, and much worse, a tourist in town has been murdered. Not only is this driving away other tourists, but Perry was the last person to see the murdered girl alive, and that makes him the prime suspect. Clare is quick to defend him, but when Perry starts acting suspiciously, it takes all her resolve and determination not to suspect him herself.
Clarity is pretty standard fare for Teen paranormal fiction - two hot boys, each with baggage that makes them mysterious or unattainable, an interesting paranormal element, a plucky heroine who finds herself in peril, but keeps going for love. It's nice that in Clarity it's for the love of a brother, as it keeps things a little more real than a girl prepared to sacrifice everything for a boy she met two weeks ago.
I'm a fan of normal stories told with a paranormal twist, and the murder mystery in Clarity was fairly pacy, with some nice moral questions raised, relating to Perry and Clare's conflict over what to tell the police and whether to suspect him or not. There were a couple of plot twists that stretched coincidence a little to the limit, and there did reach a point where there was only one main character who hadn't been dismissed as a potential suspect, which made it rather easy to predict the ending, but all in all it was interesting enough to keep pages turning, and didn't ever disappoint or bemuse.
Overall, if you're a fan of the genre you'll probably enjoy this one, though it's nothing exceptional in terms of writing style, or plot. Perfect beach reading for your summer holiday.
My thanks to the publisher for sending a copy.
If you're looking for more beach reading in the paranormal genre, My Love Lies Bleeding by Alyxandra Harvey is the start of a very entertaining series that's perfect fun and frothy reading.
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You can read more book reviews or buy Clarity by Kim Harrington at Amazon.co.uk Amazon currently charges £2.99 for standard delivery for orders under £20, over which delivery is free.
You can read more book reviews or buy Clarity by Kim Harrington at Amazon.com.
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