3 out of 4 stars
Share This Review
Sometimes a book makes such a profound impact on you that it's hard to even talk about. On rare occasion a book causes you to dwell on it long after you have closed the pages. Broken Cadence by Ami Violet is one such book.
Delaney has suffered a lot in her young life, and now she has a ghost in her head. Her psychiatrist thinks that she's only imaging him, but she knows it's much more than that. Delaney, now 18, decides a fresh start is in order. So, she stars filming a documentary in order to enter a competition for a scholarship. Will this documentary finally rid her of the ghost that haunts her?
While this story does have a supernatural element to it, it is not your usual ghost story. There is also a Christian element to this story, but by no means would I consider it Christian fiction. It's a book that is extremely hard to classify and deserves its own unique category. It is thought-provoking, mysterious and emotional.
The book is told from the third person perspective; we mostly follow Delaney. This really helps the reader to see the struggles that she faces, and to identify with her as a person. At times you want to cry with her and other times you just want to shake her. You might even have to put the book aside because it feels altogether too real.
The most interesting and unique part of this story is the documentary aspect. The author is not content to just tell us about it. She actually writes the documentary as a screen play in the novel. This allows these scenes to come to life as if on a television screen. This is a technique that I have not seen before in a novel and puts it on a completely different playing field from other such books.
As for the themes in this book, it's important to note that there are mature themes dealt with throughout. However, the author reveals these in such a way that the reader has to put the pieces together. The adult themes are never actually detailed; but following along with Delaney, the reader is still able to feel the effects of what has occurred. This, I believe, lends the book to be read by a wider audience. I applaud the masterful craftsmanship this took to leave out the details and yet still enable the reader to feel the emotions of the characters.
The only drawback to this novel was the smattering of grammatical errors that I found throughout. While these were nothing extremely distracting, the author did like to substitute passed for past quite often as well as a few other homophones. There were just enough errors to make me think that this was not professionally edited.
Broken Cadence starts out in such a mysterious fashion that you are left with no choice but to continue reading. The emotions of the characters jump out from the pages causing the reader to become impassioned. However, due to the grammatical errors, I cannot rate this novel any higher than 3 out of 4 stars. Nevertheless, the grammatical errors are not enough to turn anyone away from this book. I would highly recommend it to all who enjoy a good psychological thriller as that's the category into which this book most closely falls. If ghosts, spirituality or mature themes turn you off, this may not be the best book for you to pick up. For my part, Broken Cadence was a novel I won't soon forget.
******
Broken Cadence
View: on Bookshelves | on Amazon
Like kandscreeley's review? Post a comment saying so!
