Radiance

Radiance (Riley Bloom #1)
Alyson Noel
183 pages
Publisher: Square Fish
Source: Borders sale :(
★★★★☆

You can read the Goodreads summary here.

Riley died along with her parents in a car accident that her sister, Ever, survived.  After spending some time in Summerland and following Ever around, she finally crossed over to Here, which is where Radiance starts.  The Council soon assigns her a job - she must help ghosts who have not yet crossed over, cross over to the Here.

So... kind of like a young Ghost Whisperer, but with a spunky little twelve year old instead of Jennifer Love Hewitt.  Score!

Despite the fact that this book seems to have been written for a younger audience than the Immortals series, which it was spun off from, I thoroughly enjoyed this books for several reasons.  It was a really interesting, short read that I was able to finish in an evening (I love books like that!).  The plot was interesting though brief and the characters were diverse, from Riley's classmates in Here, to The Council, to her guide Bodhi, who was described very well.

What I absolutely loved the most was the traditional paranormal aspect of the book, which deals a lot with ghosts.  I loved the way Noel treated them in a traditional way, rather than changing the characteristics of the paranormal groups like so many other authors have changed the aspects of vampirism, for example.  I'm a huge fan of ghosts/ghost hunting, etc., so I was glad to see them presented accurately in this novel.

I'm giving Radiance four stars instead of five because I felt like it was very short and was more of an introduction to the rest of the Riley Bloom series.  It didn't have a very in-depth plot.  Still, if you've read and enjoyed the Immortals series, I highly recommend this book.