Everlasting

PARANORMAL:  Shy, studious Sophia lives in a tiny town in Montana. Mandy, who moved four years earlier calls and asks her to fly to Charleston for the entire summer before their senior year of high school. Sophia, though suspicious, goes anyway. In Charleston, she finds Mandy living with her boyfriend, and another guy named Tate in a huge old Victorian house on the beach. Mandy hasn’t seen her parents in eight months. As soon as she arrives, Sophia hears strange music, sees evil-looking beings cloaked in black, lurking around. She brushes it off, thinking it’s her imagination running wild. She falls hard for Tate, and it seems they’re destined to be together. But will it be in this life…or the next?

Ms. Kuhl has a uniquely original talent for description in this contemporary paranormal. Head-shaking credibility issues begin early and last throughout the story…from the “worrying” mother allowing a 17 year-old girl to fly cross-country for the summer when she’s had zero contact with the other child’s parents for four years…to the farfetched capabilities of ghosts. Sophia is supposedly bright, but brushes off the strange terrifying sounds and sights, falls in love instantly, once, then immediately latches on to someone else totally controlling and unlikeable—making her seem shallow and wishy-washy. The plot is sketchy and rampant with loose ends, inconsistencies, incorrect word usage, actions that don’t fit today’s age of information, and a confusing, unsatisfying ending that sends an iffy message to heartbroken teens. However, readers looking for G-Rated stories will find this refreshingly free from sexual scenes and any traces of foul language.

Lori Leger