Book Review: Insight

Insight
Author: Jamie Magee 
Pages: 314 pgs
Reading Level: YA
Published: July 20th 2010
Review Source: Author
Available: Amazon / Barnes and Noble / Smashwords

Summary: (by Author) Some say that dreams are the doorway to the soul. Willow Haywood is no stranger to that doorway. Each night she shares a blissful, silent dream with a stunning blue-eyed boy. With each new moon she is haunted by a painful nightmare shared with a different boy, who’s always hidden by the shadows.

In her waking hours she must battle her sixth sense. The one that allows her to feel others emotions as if they were her own. This insight is exhausting and frustrating causing her to draw inward, only trusting her family and few close friends. Oddly, this sense also attracts ghostly images that seem to appear out of nowhere.  With a touch, they take her to wherever they may be, allowing her to change their emotion. This alone would cause most to go insane, but Willow filters her aggression by painting, capturing the emotion she changed.

One August night a nightmare came days after the new moon. In this dream the shadowed boy marked her wrist with star, leaving her father no choice but to share a family secret that would tie all of the odd attributes of Willow’s life together. Now, she has no choice but to outrun the fate that is closing in around her.

 In an attempt to lure her, the shadowed figure captures her closest friends.  In order to save them, she must weave through broken myths, half truths, and the undeniable power of the Zodiac. With each step she takes Willow comes to realize that she has lived before, her path is one that she chose, and this trial is simply the beginning.

To categorize this book, I would call it a mystic love story adventure. Willow, a teenager, thought she was normal but with a special gift, the insight of emotion.  After one of her nightmares, she realizes that there is a new mark on her wrist, a star, and this makes her family go in a frenzy to get to safety. During this, she learns that her family has a secret life and that they are from a different dimension.  They embark on this new adventure, where  she meets her soul mate, Landen who has been the boy in her dreams for quite a long time.  But, she finds out  that the other boy that has plagued her nightmares and marked her with the  star, is Drake the one that  appeared in her life before they left and that he is after her.  Once they travel to her home  dimension and she meets her soul mate in person, they start to fulfill an old prophesy, where they have to face the demons in her nightmare and help friends and family.

This creative fantasy takes you in a world where the power of family, trust and true love is what makes it run. The author gives a compelling view of each character and their gift and  transport you inside the story. You are treated to danger, mystery, adventure and true love all in one. The final outcome doesn’t lack surprises and unexpected twist and turns that leaves you anticipating the additional installments that are sure to come. The only flaw to the book is that there were some errors throughout, but not enough to be disrupting.