Review ~ Lightpoints - Peter Kassan

Paperback received from the author in exchange for an honest review

Release Date: March 24th 2013

Publisher: Melange Books, LLC

Description:

What if you suddenly discovered you had a sense-and powers-that almost no one else in the world did? When Amanda Lindner Nichols, a 24-year-old graphic artist living with her husband in Queens, New York, is revived from a near-death experience, she discovers she perceives everyone around her as points of light-but not with her eyes. She soon learns she can not only perceive the life energy of others, but she can give and take it. With the help of others like her, she brings her husband Chris to the brink of death and back to bestow on him the same remarkable faculty, and they're the happiest they've been. But not for long. All over the world, people who've been revived from their own near-death experience at just the right moment discover themselves with these same unusual powers. They find ways to use them-some for good and some for evil. When Amanda and Chris encounter a ruthless group of gangsters with the same faculty, tragedy follows-and Amanda faces the greatest challenge of her life.

My Opinion

It was the description of the book that intrigued me into accepting the request. I mean death, paranormal, powers, romance and ruthless gangsters sounds interesting right? I couldn't ask for more from a book really, however for me this book was disappointing in the execution and in all honesty was slightly boring.

The book started off well. It had fast-paced action and hooked me into reading more as I was intrigued to find out what was happening. At first I thought the book was going to be told from 2 peoples POV as the chapters do switch between Amanda and Herrera at the start and if it remained like that I think it would have been OK. However, the author introduces many people who have had NDEs (Near Death Experience) throughout and beside the one chapter we hear about them they are never mentioned again so in my opinion it felt pointless and added nothing. Most of the story focuses on Amanda and Chris but I didn't feel there was much of a story there which is why the author needed to add extra characters to fill out the book. Everything just felt really messy and choppy as it constantly jumps from one person to the next.

With an average chapter standing at 2 pages you do fly through them at a quick pace but this also caused a problem as there was hardly any detail and absolutely no character backgrounds which stopped me from engaging with any of them. I just didn't care about their lives and once a chapter ended I had forgotten about them. For me the author stated everything rather than described it which left the writing very stiff and awkward, especially the speech. 

I liked the initial concept of people coming back and having NDEs, I just think the plot and structure needs more work. The description promises a lot more than the book delivers and as for ruthless gangs? Well they didn't seem that ruthless. Yes they kill people but as a reader I wanted more detail, longer chapters and more background info. They came into play more towards the end but even that was concluded abruptly and in all honesty the ending didn't satisfy me in the slightest, it just didn't make sense for Amanda to go from one extreme to the other - which again I think is a problem caused by the lack of detail.

I did get more into this book when there were a succession of chapters on Amanda and Chris as it was easier to follow and flowed better. However, I did cringe repeatedly at the romance. This might be a personal preference as I hate the word "babe" and it is used excessively but everything did feel wooden. Beside that these chapters did feel repetitive with the "A week later" becoming the common way to start the chapter. It just felt like I was reading the same thing over and over again - I wanted more but like I said before I don't feel there was much of a story there.

Overall this book has an interesting concept about death and NDEs but for me I just found myself bored and hoping for more. Personally I feel it needs more detail to fill it out rather than stating everything and to either get rid of the extra characters or somehow link them all so you don't forget about them and aid the flow of the book as it wouldn't be so sudden.