Steven James

Sixteen-year-old Daniel Byers begins investigating the death of a teenage girl when a vision of her appears to him at her funeral, and as he struggles to find the truth, he slips further and further into his own private blurred reality.

Blur

Chelsea Hunter

*I received this book free to read and review. Thanks to Amazon Children's Publishing and Netgalley.*

The beginning was interesting. It started off in the future (compared to when the rest of the book takes place) and explained what would be occurring during the book. The last line of the prologue immediately snagged my attention, and I didn't even want to put the book down to sleep, it was just that good. Even with knowing what the blur was like in the beginning, I was pleasantly shocked when it actually occurred because what I had imagined from the brief description didn't really prepare me for the blur was actually like. I thought it was more like visions in the mind, but the blur was like coming-to-life visions taking place in reality. One thing that stood out a lot to me was that Daniel was not portrayed in a stereotypical way, for instance a lot of times football players (like Daniel) are portrayed as the bullies whereas Daniel is the kid who stands up to bullies and doesn't take pleasure in picking on others. Not to mention that he isn't as confident as a lot of male characters are portrayed which was definitely an added bonus. Kyle was the same way with an addition of him being funny. It was easily to like the characters that Steven James has woven into the story. All-in-all, I thought the characters were very well-written. Stacey kept me guessing because I wanted to know exactly how she played into the story and who she basically was. When I found out, I wasn't 100% shocked, but I wasn't 100% accurate in my assumption either, so I liked that. I really enjoyed Nicole (and not just because Nicole is my middle name), but because it was literally like I was reading about myself. I found myself double-guessing how the story would end up or who was doing what, and I liked that I wasn't 100% confident in how I thought it was going to end. When I finished the last page, I was deeply disappointed that I could not pick up the next book in the series and start right away, because it was that phenomenal of a story.

I would recommend this book to anyone who enjoys YA books.

Blur

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