Here are the basics ...
Crash (Visions, Book One) by Lisa McMann
Publication date: Jan 8, 2013
Publisher: Simon Pulse
Category: Young Adult - Paranormal
Source: Borrowed from library
Summary: Jules lives with her family above their restaurant, which means she smells like pizza most of the time. Not exactly a recipe for popularity, but she can handle that. What she can’t handle is the recurring vision that haunts her. Over and over, Jules sees a careening truck hit a building and explode and nine body bags in the snow. The vision is everywhere - on billboards, television screens, windows - and she’s the only one who sees it. And the more she sees it, the more she sees. The vision is giving her clues, and soon Jules knows what she has to do. Because now she can see the face in one of the body bags, and it’s someone she knows. Someone she has been in love with for as long as she can remember. (Adapted goodreads.com)
My thoughts…
In honor of Jules' love of lists, I thought it would be fun to review the book the same way.- Jules. She cracked me up. Here she is getting bombarded with crazy visions of explosions and dead bodies, but somehow she manages to be funny. She doesn't accept that this is normal though. She questions her sanity plenty of times but then says "the hell with it!" and follows her instincts no matter how crazy it seems. She just owns it. Which I loved.
- Siblings. The portrayal of Jules' relationships with her siblings, Trey and Rowan, was by far one of my favorite things. They tease each other but there's obviously so much love too. They really have each other's backs.
- Family restaurant. This is the second book in a row that I've read with a family restaurant and it's a fun setting! Then throw in their rivalry with another local restaurant and it gets pretty interesting. I mean it's a little Romeo-and-Juliet over-the-top at times but you know what, people are serious about their recipes.
- Sawyer Angotti. I give the boy points for not getting a restraining order on Jules. I love Jules and all but if some person came up to me saying they had visions of me dying and wanted to save my life.. I'd probably run screaming in the other direction.
- The visions. I thought the author did a good job of describing the visions themselves and how they were incapacitating Jules' life.
3 minor reservations I had about the story:
- Oh my dogs. This and "oh dogs!" is one of Jules' favorite sayings. I'm not sure why she says dogs but it made me do a double take the first time (and second).
- Insta-love-ish. I remember thinking I might be in love with someone when I was in high school so I get Jules' heightened emotions. But I wish we could've had more scenes with Jules and Sawyer in the present (they have a childhood history) to understand her feelings for him better. We hardly learned anything about him.
- More explanations needed. Maybe it's because this is the first in a series but I had so many questions. Like how is Jules getting the visions? Is someone sending them to her, is she psychic? And why? It has to be part of a bigger plan, not some one-time vision fluke.
Do I recommend?: I do! It's a fast-paced entertaining book. Even though I wish there had been more details, I didn't let myself dwell on them too much. I just went along for the ride and I'm looking forward to seeing what happens next.
Happy reading!
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