She managed to speak to my dark soul and gave me a plot line I didn't even know I was yearning for. As the story unfolds, readers are introduced to the O'Dales' daughter, Darla, who communicates from her state of "in-between." These sections are reminiscent of Alice Sebold's The Lovely Bones in which the young victim speaks from beyond the grave. I love this conversation because it’s exactly the way people get to know each other—really know each other. It’s how young people’s friendships deepen. They sit around and talk—not just about life and school and books and movies, but about how they think, how they view the world. You can’t have these conversations with just anybody—you wouldn’t want to! You reserve them for the people you trust. You feel like, if you just had enough of these kinds of conversations, you’d achieve some sort of perfect communion. They would get you, and you would get them, too. Even though it's a challenging read, I found myself having to put little effort into following the story. I still can't tell you what happened exactly, but I went with the flow and finished it in two reading sessions. Not to sound like an overly spiritual Sue or anything, but I guess I just 'felt' it. Halfway through the book, I even had to cry a little, something which happens rarely while reading, not even when one of my favourite characters dies. I don't think I feel the same way about that. Or maybe I do and I'm just not ready to admit it yet.

I love a good mystery, and this one kept me guessing. Above all, however, this is a book about families and human relationships. It's a good thing the blurb is there because, just like Magnolia and Rom, I didn't realize they were altering reality either every time they entered the portal. It does make sense now, though, as far as anything can make sense in this book. The In Between place is beautiful. I wish something like this really existed, and if it did, I would venture there.urn:lcp:somewhereinbetwe0000gill_c2q8:epub:588645a7-e475-4f49-9e6e-d51a0b44c79f Foldoutcount 0 Identifier somewhereinbetwe0000gill_c2q8 Identifier-ark ark:/13960/t8md8tx4q Invoice 1652 Isbn 9780340923511 Published by Thought Catalog Books, an imprint of the digital magazine Thought Catalog, which is owned and operated by The Thought & Expression Company LLC, an independent media organization based in Brooklyn, New York and Los Angeles, California.

ISBN 978-1-949759-47-1 This is for the ones who are somewhere in between their heartache and healing. It’s a rollercoaster, but it’s not fast. And you’re not sitting down. You don’t even really have a body. It’s just the feeling of moving in a roller coaster, January starts, and then it moves forward, sort of—I guess toward you? If you were looking at it. And then February goes, like, upward. And March gets higher, but then sort of plateaus. The cast in this piece is fairly modest in size. It stars Rom, a geek of sorts, though not one with particularly good grades, and Magnolia, a kind of wannabe punk. They're the sort of misfit children that find each other and immediately establish a bond. They're not hipster or antisocial or even outright rejects, they're just kids who struggle with the challenges of adolescent life. They have friends and even relationships, but still have a hard time finding connections that really make them feel alive, ones that make life worth living. They're a far more compelling pair than I'm probably making them sound, though. In spite of how heavily they fall into classic teen angst tropes, these two actually feel very sincerely developed. This is probably because they aren't necessarily rebelling against the world. They don't have some juvenile chip on their shoulder nor do they insist on being miserable, they just can't seem to find satisfaction in life the same way that others do. They simply want something a little more. Readers also get to see them at different points in time and it was great fun to have the different nuggets of character development all come together around the middle of the book and then we get to see the characters grow from there. It's a very clever way to tell a love/friendship story and one I really enjoyed. In terms of the rest of the cast, there really isn't too much going on. There are other characters in the story, but they are largely to the side and you'll never really get to know them very well.While Darla shares the past story, Julie is living in the unfolding present. She walks the land in silence and sits in silence with the tenant who lives in a cabin on the ranch: Virgil Blue. She learns of spirit animals and symbols. I can wholeheartedly say that I am glad to have bought and read this book. It's not the most astounding piece of fiction I have ever read, but it felt typical enough for me to connect to it, while also being strange enough for me to consider it special. The author, Donna Milner, is courageous in allowing this silence rather than filling it with activity. And one could say the couple is courageous in being with what is. The land, and the couple's silence, hold much more than first seen. One night the sky appears "like an electrical charged curtain" with the aurora borealis, the northern lights. I don't always read novels like this, when I do it is very rare. Lately all I have read was surrealism and satire. This novel kind of falls in between paranormal/ supernatural and contemporary. It's a very sweet and touching novel. Nature is a big thing, a theme. There is a whole feast of description of the beautiful land that the three main characters Julie, Ian, and Virgil Blue inhabit. The book cover is also beautiful, and I'm assuming that it is portraying the land in the book. Vlahos was raised in a strict religious household, but began questioning her beliefs in high school after the sudden death of a friend. When she got pregnant at nineteen, she was shunned by her community and enrolled herself in nursing school to be able to support herself and her baby. But nursing soon became more than a job: when she focused on palliative care and hospice work, it became a calling.