Kiss by Ted Dekker and Erin Healy
Warning: mild spoilers ahead. No like, no read. If you don’t care, feel free to highlight.
I love pretty much anything by Ted Dekker. His book Blink (recently renamed Blink of an Eye, with additional content) still remains on my all-time favorites list.
Team-ups, however, make me a little wary. It’s hard to do them well, because each author’s style is so incredibly unique. House remains the sole exception that I personally have seen.
This one was done fairly well, which may be due in part to the fact that I’ve never read anything by the second author. Still, I enjoyed it.
Shauna, the main character, gets in a car accident with her younger brother as a passenger. When she wakes up in the hospital, six months have gone by, and there is a huge hole in her memory. What’s worse, her brother Rudy is all but a vegetable, kept alive by the care of their Oval-Office-seeking father and domineering stepmother. Neither of her parents believes the truth of her amnesia, and they refuse to even let her near her little brother. It seems like her only friends are her supposed-boyfriend, Wayne (she can’t remember him either), and her doting uncle. However, a nosy news reporter seems to have a different side of the story – one that could seriously rock her world. And the unexpected side effects from the drugs – or lack thereof – leave her on the run with a man she should know but can absolutely not remember.
The premise of the book intrigued me. Shauna’s gift (she can *look into people’s heads by touching them and steal their memories*) reminds me a little of some of the parapsychic powers in Push. However, her moral dilemmas were less-than-satisfyingly solved, particularly the last one.
The general naivete of the characters bothered me, too. Shauna wasn’t ready to believe that Wayne was really her boyfriend almost from the start; yet she latches onto Miguel without a second thought. Also, her dad was a Senator and running for President. Obviously a fairly canny guy. How in the world did he not figure out that *Patrice and the uncle were illegally funding his campaign*? I mean seriously, if you have that much money coming in, wouldn’t you at least check out of curiousity? And the ending leaves a lot to be desired.
Possible objectionable content: Shauna *Mind Raping Wayne* in fury, plus some general moral screwiness. Also, her family disturbs me. 14+ if you ask me.
Stardragon’s rating: 7.5 out of 10 butterscotch candies.
Haven’t done one of these for a while… enjoyed it.
