Sometimes when I am picking out the next book I want to read, I go solely on the cover art. I don’t read the jacket flap or the blurb on the back or even the little summary on the back of the title page. I let the cover draw me in and then allow myself to be totally surprised (or not) by the story that unfolds with the book. Debut author Dawn Metcalf’s Luminous was one of these books for me – I was completely seduced by the cover (I was feeling really girly that day, OK?) and it lead me to expect either a romance or a supernatural fantasy. And I wasn’t disappointed: Luminous is full of fantasy and romance, but also mystery and a healthy splash of danger. Throughout the book, I’d sometimes find myself confused, having to reread some sections to understand what was going on, but I think that confusion was how I was supposed to feel. Like Consuela, the 17 year-old Mexican-American teen at the heart of Luminous, we never really know what’s going on, who or what to believe, and what magical or horrifying thing may happen next.
Everything starts out normal enough: slightly overweight (curvy) Consuela is in the dressing room trying on jeans and hating every minute of it. But then she sees something odd in the mirror, eyes that aren’t her own peering back at her, she hears a hauntingly melodious voice in her head, telling her to “know thyself” and she faints on the dressing room floor. Shaken, Consuela goes home and discovers a soft tissue mound on the back of her neck, just below her skull. And then everything gets strange – Consuela is compelled to probe into the mound and slowly peels off her skin until she’s just her skeleton. Her senses are sharpened and her connection to the world and its energies is heightened; she climbs out her bedroom window into the night sky and feels the compulsion to wrap herself in a “skin” of air and float across her town. She is drawn to a young man about to commit suicide and she whispers to him that he should not give up. When he “hears” her and feels renewed hope, Consuela finds herself realizing that she has just done the work she has always known she was meant to do.
Consuela has entered the “Flow:” a place between the world of the living and the dead where a small group of teens serve as “guardian angels” for those who are living, preventing them from dying before their time. Each of the teens has a supernatural ability which allows them to save certain people who are marked for greatness in the real world, but none of the teens really know why they’re in the Flow, how they got there or how long they’ll stay. But Consuela’s joy at becoming an “angel” is shortlived because something ominous and deadly is happening in the Flow – someone or something is murdering the guardian angels, allowing their mortal charges to die, and disrupting the energy and life force in the Flow. It falls to Consuela and the mysterious, gorgeous boy V, to figure out who’s trying to destroy them, the Flow, and the world, before it’s too late.
- Posted by Cori