This is a very odd book and did not come out like I expected. But mostly in a good way.
Scarlett Wenderoth lives on Catalina Island and is a high school junior. After her brother died unexpectedly several months ago, her mother's been sleeping or drugged up and Scarlett herself feels absent from her life. She's developing anorexis and liking the idea of starting to cut herself in order to deal with her feelings and/or lack thereof. She's not terribly interested in her boyfriend or her life. The book takes its time with the mourning of this and it's genuinely sad for a while.
Then Scarlett meets Will Cohen, the new boy in town for his senior year. Will and Scarlett have an attraction right off, but it's more than you'd think. It takes a while to get into the details of it, but Will has a psychic talent for sensing when a person is in danger (hence why his dad moved him to a place where you'd think nothing is going to happen) and Scarlett is setting off all kinds of danger alerts in him.
Then the story kind of morphs after Will saves her. Scarlett ... pretty much gets over her urges to not eat (is it that easy?) and perhaps cut, breaks it off with her jerk boyfriend, and after meeting Will's rabbi dad, gets interested in Judaism and Kabbalah and deducing if Will is a gifted person. Will, on the other hand, backs out of the relationship almost as soon as it starts, which is kind of a bummer.
I did like how the mystery of Will's powers and how they related to his dead mom was explained/deduced, though. It also ties in with Judaism in intriguing ways. I liked reading about the very small town life of Catalina, a place I'd be curious about visiting. I liked how Scarlett starts rediscovering her own desires and even though she finds him "absolutely amazing" and "unlike anyone else I knew," at the same time she can be all, "he wasn't my universe." Scarlett is far saner and sensible than uh, pretty much everyone I know on this topic. She resolves that if her remaining family can't take care of her, she'll take care of herself.
Much as I was expecting something like "intriguing psychic meant to be romance," which it kind of is, it is more about Scarlett's recovery as kicked off by Will, and then she takes things into her own hands. I think I liked it overall but am at the same time rather conflicted over it. I sort of feel like while reviewing this book I needed to be fair about what was in it so nobody's misled. There's a lot to think about here. I wished there was a bit more romance and it seemed a little too easy for Scarlett to just wake up and realize she should eat, but overall this book has depths you don't see too often in teenage fiction. Were you expecting Kabbalah? Nope!
So...three and a half stars.
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