Farsighted is a very different take on what being a blind teenager is like. Alex has been blind since birth, so he's never known how it feels to see. Because of this, his other senses are heightened and he sees through smell. He even mentions at one point that he likes the way the color green looks because it smells really good.
His heightened sense are not of the normal variety though, he sometimes can even see the future with his second sight. This second sight is brought to his attention by his new next door neighbor, Miss Teak. Alex's mother owns a florist shop and Miss Teak now owns the new psychic shop next door. With her help Alex learns to use his new abilities to help save his new- and probably first- friend and huge crush, Simmi.
Farsighted is Emlyn Chand's debut YA novel.
Chand has done a wonderful job at taking on the task of writing from the perspective of a blind teenager. I giver he big props for this one, because if you aren't blind it's extremely difficult to know what a blind person goes through. She tries her best to explain his life, and even leaves out physical descriptions of the characters that Alex encounters.
For example when Alex talks about how beautiful Simmi is, he mentions her smell and her voice. We never hear about what she actually looks like, but we know that she smells like almonds and is from India with an accent.
I really did appreciate Alex as the protagonist in this novel. For some reason though, I just couldn't really get into it. Maybe this type of YA just isn't my thing, I'm not sure what it is. That is really the only reason why I gave Farsighted three black hearts out of five. For anyone who likes all sorts of YA this book is probably more like a four or five star for you!
The only other big issues I had with the novel was that it's speed was pretty slow in the first half. The second half of the book really picked up, and it took off pretty well from there. As I previously mentioned, it is written in first person. I can tell you from experience that writing in first person is not always easy, and this might be why it took a little while for me to really get into the story.
If you like YA with a paranormal twist that's written in a first person perspective I do suggest this book!
No comments:
Post a Comment