FlumeAward – Born at Midnight
8705784
Born at Midnight by C.C. Hunter
I tried to read this, only because of the Flume, but it was so boring and cliched and badly written that I just had to stop at page 60. Troubled girl with mysterious powers gets sent to a camp for troubled teens. Sound familiar? It really read like it was written by an unsophisticated writer, like a teenager just learning how to tell a good story. And not in a ‘I totally feel like I’m in the narrator’s head’ sort of way. — Julie A. Nashua PL 1/2014
Kylie is a fairly normal teenager -her parents are in the middle of a divorce, she and her best friend are growing apart, and she gets busted at a party. Also, she sees people that nobody else sees. When Kylie gets sent to a camp as a result of the party bust, she discovers a whole lot of "people" who can do things the normal people can’t. But Kylie wants to be normal so badly, she’s praying for a brain tumor as the perpetrator of her hallucinations, instead of the possibility that she’s something other than normal.
I appreciated Kylie’s angst with her parents, and coming to terms with the people that they are, instead of the parental units that she always saw them as. I also really liked about her that she was such a good friend to her best friend, even though they’re clearly in different places, now both literally and figuratively.
I empathized with Kylie’s confusion about her feelings toward the boys in her life, as I remember the first time I had strong feelings toward a boy after that first boy. Yes, they got confused in my head.
I also admired Kylie trying to be open-minded, and overcoming her prejudices. I would really like to know what happens to Kylie, Derek, Lucas, et. al., and may have to read Awake at Dawn, and the rest of the series to find out!
Good for middle and high school-aged teens. Probably more appealing to girls than boys, with the girl on the cover and the love triangle going on.
-Kirsten Rundquist Corbett, Sandown Public Library, 2/21/14