Missing Mandy
Shirley S. Simon
Danny is an artist who moves to a very small town after a divorce. He's haunted by an apparition of a girl, a lovely girl, that he doesn't realize is more ghost than human...at first. Who is she? And how can he help her?
This is a relatively short book, and the concept is a good one. The mystery of the girl is one that the reader wants to hang on until the end to find out how it all ends, because all is not as it seems. While the plot was simple and straight-forward, I liked the characters and the setting.
The execution leaves a bit to be desired. For me, I found the dialogue stiff, formal, and unrealistic. There is a lot of description of mundane daily activity, especially in the first half of the book. It takes a long while to set up and get to the heart of the story.
The pacing was off. While the beginning moved too slow, the ending wrapped up too quickly! The whole climatic ending, which I could have enjoyed for pages and pages, was wrapped up in summary form, like a witness recalling events of a crime to the police.
The other issue I had with the book was the punctuation...especially the misplaced commas. Commas were placed where there shouldn't have been any, and missing where they were needed. It caused a little bit of re-reading sentences on my part to get the right inflections.
With some editing, this could be a very good story.
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