Amber House by Kelly Moore, Tucker Reed, and Larkin Reed

This book kept reminding me of Beloved and I cringe when I think that I'm comparing a Scholastic paranormal teen book to a highly-acclaimed novel by Toni Morrison. But truthfully, this is like the innocent little white girl version of Beloved. I was originally hooked into reading it because it's a book co-authored by a mother and her two daughters, and for a long time when I was growing up, my mom kept saying that we should write a book together. I thought at the time, "Hell no, that's a recipe for disaster." So when I found out that there was this book (series) written by not two, but three closely related women…I had to see this for myself.

It's actually not bad. I'm not a huge fan of their writing style--the dialogue is a bit too snippy for me to consider it real, and the independent sentence fragments seem too forced--but the plot develops into an interesting one and it sucked me in. As much as I dislike time travel, this book made me realize that what I really hate is time-traveling visions where you aren't actually influencing anything…So naturally, through this discovery of a new thing to hate, I developed a huge sense of curiosity about what the hell all these annoying visions could possibly lead to. How were they helping further the plot?

Well, read the damn thing and you'll find out. Or don't, and you'll probably never care. After all, this is tween fiction. Its tagline: A house full of secrets. [insert creepy, suspenseful stare]

I have to say, Sarah's foil was pretty obvious and a lot of the characters were flat and static, but for what this is--for a tween time-traveling paranormal mystery written by three women--this is pretty damn impressive. It also touches on historical and modern oppression through topics like disabilities, gender roles, race, and abuse. I'm not saying every scene sends a positive message--I'm pretty sure that in real life, there's no such thing as the perfect, magical strapless bra that keeps your chest (and by the way, how did this stick-thin pubescent girl get a chest?) securely in place. Money also clearly grows on trees in this fictional land called Maryland. (And when the hell did Maryland become part of the South?) However, it will get kids to think about important issues, however consciously or unconsciously.

So I guess I am pro-Amber House. Definitely not full of awe, but neither is it awful.

And by the way, this is a genius way to get your teenagers into good colleges--have them co-author a book which you already had written before they were born.

~7/10~