Song: Smile Lines - Incubus
“And to the girl with a dragonfly tattoo, don’t do it…”
“After getting kicked out of school and sent to live with her grandmother, Sabine Rose is determined to become a normal teenage girl. That’s why she hides her psychic gift from everyone at her new school, pretending that the predictions she helps write for the school newspaper are just fun nonsense. But when she starts having deadly visions of a girl with a dragonfly tattoo, she’s afraid everyone will think she’s freak, or worse—that no one will believe her until someone dies. Just like at her last school. Framed for a crime she didn’t commit, Sabine must find a way to prove her innocence—and warn the girl with the dragonfly tattoo before it’s too late.” From the back cover.
Sabine spends a great deal of effort trying to be just like everybody else. She has a best friend, nicknamed Penny-love, who Sabine shares everything with, except for the occasional dream. Nor has she revealed why she is living with her grandmother.
Sabine doesn’t want the dreams and visions that caused her to be expelled from her previous school, even though she is able to save Josh, the boy she is interested in, because of a vision. After she pushes him out of the way of a car, he asks her out on a date. They become steady dates, double-dating a few times with Josh’s best friend, Evan and his girlfriend, Danielle, who has a dragonfly tattoo on her wrist.
Sabine has had visions of a girl and a dragonfly several times. When she realizes that there really is someone who fits her visions she becomes concerned about her enough to follow her when she breaks into the school. She discovers Danielle looking for something in the file storage room. The janitor, who has been stealing from the school, catches them. He threatens to blame the thefts on them. Sabine and Danielle get away from him, but he ends up in the hospital from a beating he gets after they leave.
Sabine finds herself being framed for the break in and for the beating of the janitor. But she is able to get rid of the evidence that is left in her locker, before the police find it. She now knows she has an enemy, and she is forced to keep on her toes while she tries to discover who wants to destroy her reputation.
In the meantime, her grandmother has hired a boy, Dominic, to help out on her farm. Sabine is hurt when she discovers that her grandmother is sharing the secrets of her psychic skills with him, choosing him over Sabine. But she has gone so long in denying her gift, and ignoring her spirit guide, she has become rusty and can’t call it up at will when she finally decides she needs it. When she tries to prove to her grandmother that she is psychic she can’t do it. Her spirit guide, Opal, is miffed at being ignored most of the time so she doesn’t respond.
Sabine is left on her own to solve the mystery of who wants her out of the school, so she turns to her friend, Manny, at the school paper. He pairs her up with a Goth girl named Thorn, who uses psychometry to find things. Together, the three of them try to discover who has it in for Sabine.
When things get difficult and Dominic is the only one who can help her, can Sabine let herself trust him enough to rely on him? Will she realize that Josh really is not the rock she thinks he is. Can she ever let herself respond to the interest she feels for Dominic instead, or is she going to keep pushing him away?
This book, which is the first of a series, is interesting but doesn’t go very deep in character development. The character’s motives are the usual fare found in many of the young adult novels today. There are no real surprises. I had the culprit figured long before the end of the book. The only reason I would read any subsequent volumes is to find out what happens between Sabine and Dominic. I think, however, that this is a good book for young adults, there is very little that is offensive in it. It is an easy read and has enough romance to interest the high school girl.
A well written story but with nothing unexpected happening. I'll even read the next one.
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