Perception by Kim Harrington

*This review contains spoilers.*

This book is the sequel to Clarity, about a teenage girl in Cape Cod who has psychic abilities and finds herself faced with a murder investigation as well as a love triangle.

My Thoughts:

1. I should mention that I loved the first book, so of course I picked this one up. 
2. I really, really enjoyed this book. It was so engaging that I can honestly say I read it in about two and a half hours. 
3. Just a random thing, the inside covers are done with this really natural looking green paper...it's like flecked with tree fibers or something. It's just a gorgeously bound book in general. 
4. Like the first book, I enjoyed the paranormal influence throughout...how normal it is to the Fern family, how embedded it is. 
5. Kim Harrington's style is just to die for! I love, love, love the way she writes. It's very accessible and fluid, but still very much poignant, in my opinion. 
6. The mystery in this book is just amazing! You really are kept guessing on all fronts. Twists and turns all over the place. 
7. I really did feel genuine prickles of fear on my spine. It's easy to get that through the visceral sense of cinematography and sound effects in a movie, but I rarely get that in a book. However, here, I was literally freaked out. Like, I read this from roughly 6:00 PM to 8:00PM and if it had been any later, I would've genuinely been frightened, Kim Harrington is that good. 
8. The love interests! Woooo! Can I just say I love Gabriel. His protection of Clare from Cody, his passion, his understanding, how he's willing to bank his future on her decision...just his general demeanor is very appealing. In the end, the love triangle was resolved in a very satisfactory manner. 
9. I loved the ending of this book. Clarity ended on kind of an ominous note, what with the creepy prediction from that other psychic in town, but Perception ended on a high note. 
10. I don't mean to be critical of the Young Adult genre (I am a young adult, after all), but I find that some of them are characterized by rather cheap thrills. That's fine, I mean, camp is a good, fun romp occasionally, but I really think that this book is better than that. I don't mean to say that I think it was necessarily an awakening of my soul or anything, but I did think a lot about relationships and popularity and people and my own life. You know, it kind of was soul-stirring, for me at least. 
11. I don't know what to tell you other than I thought this was a well-written, engaging, entertaining book that genuinely made me care for the characters and swoon a bit over Gabriel. (Not that it's hard to make me swoon.) This is pretty much what I want to get when I go to the store looking for a new book. 

Who Should Read It:

• Mystery fans! Seriously, I was guessing and having to re-evaluate and guessing again for a good two-hundred of the almost three-hundred pages of this book. 
• People who read the first one! This one is just as good, if not better, in my opinion. 
• Most people! I really like this as a book and highly recommend it. 

Final Score: 10/10 Pretty much perfect. Not in a way that I'd ever read it again, but in a reading it was a wonderful experience kind of way. 

I checked out Kim Harrington's website (here), and apparently her next book is called The Dead and Buried and will be available next year! Ah, I'm so excited! Definitely look that up (or click that link) because it sounds really good!

Thank you for reading!