Review: Gift by Andrea J. Buchanan

Gift  
by Andrea J. Buchanan
Published: March 2012

Publisher: Open Road Media

Available: Amazon

Blurb:

High school sophomore Daisy Jones is just trying to get by unnoticed. It doesn’t help that she’s the new girl at school, lives in a trailer park, and doesn’t even own a cell phone. But there’s a good reason for all that: Daisy has a secret, unpredictable power—one only her best friend, Danielle, knows about.

Despite her “gift” (or is it a curse?), Daisy’s doing a good job of fitting in—and a cute senior named Kevin even seems interested in her! But when Daisy tries to help Vivi, a mysterious classmate in a crisis, she soon discovers that her new friend has a secret of her own. Now Daisy and her friends must deal with chilling dreams and messages from the beyond. Can Daisy channel the power she’s always tried to hide—before it’s too late?

Review: 

To start off, I have to say the blurb is very misleading. It sounds as if Daisy's gift is at the center of the story, but really this is a story about three girls being haunted by a ghost, and I think the blurb does an injustice to the real heart of the story.

Gift was a really quick read. I finished it in about two days, and that's both good and bad. It's good because the pace was fast, things moved quickly and I didn't have time to get bored. But it's also a downfall because I think there was a lot of missed opportunities to develop the characters and their relationships more.

Daisy is likable enough (despite the whining about being so poor), as are the other characters, but I couldn't quite figure out why they were so connected. The exception is the budding romance between Daisy and Kevin, as the more we learn about him the more understanding it is that he, a senior, is willing to hang out with a sophomore. I especially like how Buchanan has Kevin deal with Daisy's actions, it felt very realistic in a book of paranormal events. It's really the relationships between the three girls or at least their relationships with Daisy that I struggled with, especially between Daisy and Vivi. I wish there had been more individual interactions between them that could make me understand why they so easily made some of the choices they did.


There are so many twists in the story, that it was hard to put down, simply because it always felt like I was on the verge of learning something else that would be vital to figuring out what would happen in the end. Definitely a recommended read for people looking for a quick non-horror ghost story.