While back, Heidi Kling, author of the book Sea, tweeted a recommendation list. As you can see from the link, one of them was Flash Burnout by L. K. Madigan.
I favorited that tweet, and when I finally had the Oomph to do something about it, I ordered the book.
Thanks to Amazon’s fast 2 day shipping, I got it pretty quick, and delve into it.
The story focuses on Blake. He’s got two girls in his life – Shannon, his girlfriend. She’s pretty, gorgeous, everything a boy could ask for. He might just possibly be in love. And then there’s Marissa. She’s a friend from his photo class. Just a friend.
But that all changes when he goes to a badder part of town and takes a picture of a passed out lady on the sidewalk. Marissa sees the picture – it’s her mom. And thus begins the search, in more ways than one, for Marissa’s mom.
As Blake gets pulled farther and farther into the personal life of Marissa, his relationship with Shannon becomes a little shakey. But it’s okay – they love each other, and they’ll get through it all… right?
Blake’s a boy we can all relate to. He’s just trying to get through life – maybe get laid on the side. But there are things that just have to be dealt with, things that he can’t turn away from. When Marissa’s life starts to slowly fall apart, Blake is going to be the one to pick it back up. It’s just a matter of if what he does will endanger his own life’s stability…
The book is good. You could almost say it’s a series of photographs. We have Blake and Shannon, and then Marissa’s mom, and Blake and Marissa… and Marissa and her mom. We have Blake’s brother and the screwed up girl he’s “seeing”, who’s a piece of pie herself.
I don’t know what else to say. It’s a good book – very much worth the $8 that Amazon wants for it.
When I tweeted Heidi to let her know that I was reading it – and enjoying it – a few days ago, and she replied
@aredmoon So glad you love. Did you hear the author recently passed away? So very sad. Her book is a masterpiece, will live on forever.
So, Lisa, here’s a post-mortem “Bravo!” for you. I hope you keep writing stories up there in Heaven, so that we’ll all have something good to read when we join you. :)