I'm giving this one 3 1/2 stars. I kind of have mixed feelings about it and I've been trying to sort them out before I wrote this review. Overall a book I am glad I read. Definitely worthwhile.

First I'll list my pet peeves with this. Mr. Dismuke either had no editor or had a bad one. There were far too many "motionless waves" and the typo "shinning" when the intention was "shining" was repeated many times. "Click" and "Ding" are not dialogue and I didn't like them written as such. It's like the author was trying to put in sound effects. But none of this impacted the storyline. They just bugged me.

The storyline was quite inventive.

First the good stuff:

Truly an original story. I had initially thought maybe it was to be in the vein of Stephen King's The Shining, but was glad it was not in the end. So many twists and turns. So many people you weren't sure if they were bad guys or good guys until the end. Lots of suspense. Lots of intrigue. Lots of "paranormal". A satisfying conclusion.

Now the bad stuff:

*****SPOILER ALERT******

I didn't really find any of the characters sympathetic and felt that attempting to make Mary a heroine of sorts at the end was difficult for the reader to accept considering she'd been a bit of a bitch throughout. I guess we were supposed to let that pass because she had been drugged for so much of the book.

It was good to see John and Felicia get their comeuppance, but at the same time how do you deal with the fact that your daughter and husband tried to kill you? It doesn't appear that Mary dealt with that at all. She just moved on to a relationship with the doctor that I guess we are to assume was meant to be because he had saved her life when she was a child.

I had trouble understanding all of the mechanics of the machine, but that is really neither here nor there.


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