The story begins with scenes from two main characters, Chase and Promise. What was intriguing about the story was learning about both autism (Chase's dilemma), and cystic fibrosis (Promise's disease), and how these conditions filled their lives and the lives of those they loved. I was very ignorant of both before reading the book, and feel better educated, though it didn't feel like an agenda of the author to set the reader up like that.
What I so enjoyed was the way the writing circled around those two characters, and like an autistic person requires (as in the case of Chase) to have things 'just so', Healy put the reader into the story by weaving in the extreme placement of his drawing papers and pencils/chalk. What appeared to be an over-use of detail in the story's beginning, was exactly that, and rightly so. Chase had to have things in particular places all of the time or his center got rattled. Love the way the writer did that. It made so much sense.
The book was unique and suspenseful, and there were no lagging places. She's got a clever way of writing, and while a Christian bent wasn't very obvious, Chase was a strong believer and that plays into the story from time to time. It was a classic good versus evil tale, but with twists I've never seen before. I look forward to reading more of Healy's work.
(this book was provided free for me to review from booksneeze)
