BOOK REVIEW

Hey! It’s Barbara again! Throughout this Term, I have read a spectacular series composed by C.C. Hunter, who is also known as Christie Craig. Craig’s Shadow Falls series is such an inventive range of texts, that has sent me into a rollercoaster of emotions. If you love to cry, laugh and whine, then this is just the series for you! In this review, I will be particularly focusing on Craig’s first novel, Born at Midnight.

This text is again another romantic, fictional novel, that acknowledges the bipolar supernatural world. In this text, there are shapes involved in the romance fellow readers! Wait for it. There is a… love triangle! But hey, that’s for our later discussion. This breathtaking text, begins with the protagonist Kylie Galen, who is forcefully sent to Shadow Falls camp, after getting caught at a party where she did nothing wrong. As soon as she enters the bus to the camp, she notices the wide variety of ‘freaks’, as Kylie calls them, and immediately isolates herself next to the most ordinary person she could find, Derek. We have one member of the love triangle identified. She then arrives at the camp and notices that everyone stares at her differently. Little does she know, its because she is human, and they are supernatural. But every person sent to the camp is supernatural… So why was she sent? She later discovers that she is a ghost whisperer, after sharing her experiences with ghost whisperer Holiday, the Shadow Falls Camp Leader. The supernaturals wiggle their eyebrows to view the brain patterns of an individual. This enables them to see the category of each supernatural, such as vampire,

fae, werewolf etc. Kylie’s brain pattern remains human throughout the novel, and she struggles to find her identity. She also meets Lucas, her childhood neighbour who was accused of killing her cat. And yes, he is the third member of the love triangle. I have to admit, when I read the blurb and saw that she had a deep affection for two of the characters, my brain lit up with ‘WARNING’ signs, because I personally, DESPISE, love triangles. I naturally seem to get irritated and want to shove myself into the book and put the character with one of the two. But hey! It works out doesn't it? Us amazing readers get the other to ourselves! I can definitely say now, that my hate for love triangles has completely disappeared after reading this novel.

Christie Craig constructed this text with such fantastic structure, enabling me to constantly experience Kylie Galen’s life through her own perspective, but also experience the perspectives of other characters without moving to their point of view. Through my understanding of Craig’s Shadow Falls series, there is such a beautiful message that every teenager should understand. So, in conclusion friends, this text has been formed with full attention to every detail, and has definitely made me love shapes a bit more ;).

-B Mintzas, Year 10