Saturday, 8 August 2015

Book Review: Vintage by Steve Berman (Ghost story, gay teen)

It might look like my blog is turning into a book review site, but I promise you, it's not, I have just been lucky enough to ready some really good books in the last month. It takes quite a lot for me to get over my own laziness and bother writing a review for a book, so you can take note of this book purely on that note. Anyway, here's my review of the YA Paranormal Ficiton book, Vintage.

Vintage: A Ghost StoryVintage: A Ghost Story by Steve Berman
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I've had this book for a while, it was a recommendation from author Patricia Lynne during the A to Z when I was talking about ghost stories on the Wittegen Press blog. Anyway, I finally got round to reading it, and I am really glad I did.

Vintage is about a teenage boy who meets 'the boy of his dreams' on a lonely road. That meeting is between a ghost and a boy who begins to realise he is a medium. Our narrator is a kid who ran away from home because his parents condemned him for being gay. He lives with his aunt, hiding his sexuality from a small town for fear of more rejection, sharing his life with his best friend, Trace. I love their relationship - frank, supportive and gothic :).

This is a story grounded in the reality of a gay youth dealing with others' reactions to his sexuality, but with the added frisson of his visions of the undead world. He's immediately a character I warmed to and I slipped into his life, following him as he stumbled through his new found gift/curse as well as through his interactions with the living. I even cried when he finally talks to his aunt about his future with her.

This is a warm, dryly funny and real book. I really enjoyed it.

View all my reviews

1 comment:

Thanks for stopping by - I'd love to hear from you. :)