Monday 7 July 2014

She Is Not Invisible by Marcus Sedgwick

Synopsis (from Goodreads)

Pages: 354
Publisher: Indigo
Released: 3rd of July 2014

Laureth Peak's father has taught her to look for recurring events, patterns, and numbers--a skill at which she's remarkably talented. Her secret: She is blind. But when her father goes missing, Laureth and her 7-year-old brother Benjamin are thrust into a mystery that takes them to New York City where surviving will take all her skill at spotting the amazing, shocking, and sometimes dangerous connections in a world full of darkness. She Is Not Invisible is an intricate puzzle of a novel that sheds a light on the delicate ties that bind people to each other.

What I Have To Say

Anything that Marcus Sedgwick writes is a pretty safe bet for a good read. This is the third of his books that I've read and I've enjoyed every one. But this caught my attention for the obvious reason. This is the first time I've ever seen a book with a blind protagonist. Sedgwick has taken a massive step for diversity in YA.

I'm a big fan of anything different, anything I've never seen before. It's more interesting to see the world from a different point of view. And this is a book where the main character can't see.

Sedgwick did a really good job of showing the world from Laureth's point of view. He really showed how difficult even simple expressions are. The part that really stuck in my mind was a paragraph about the phrase "grey area"  and how words like black and white and grey just mean nothing to her because she's never seen them. We live in a world where even our language isn't accessible to the blind.

I could spend this whole review talking about Laureth's lack of sight. But that would be unfair to the book. Just like Laureth, there is so much more to it than just blindness. So much of it was about mystery and coincidence. Sedgwick skillfully builds the mystery surrounding Laureth's father and what had happened to him. But I think that the best thing was the coincidences and how he worked the number 354 into everything while exploring the scientific and mathematical equations through Jack's notebook.

This is what makes Sedgwick's books so good. They are well researched and he builds the story on the research without making it seem too complicated or overloaded with information. And this one is ever 354 pages long. 

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