Sight by Juliet Madison Pages: 218
Published by Diversion Books on July 14, 2015
Series: The Delta Girls #1
Source: Paperback ARC from Publisher
I spent my birthday fast asleep. In a coma to be exact.
When Savannah wakes up after two months in the hospital, she sees a whole lot more than expected, things that could put those close to her at risk.The five Delcarta sisters have never believed in the paranormal, not like their woo-woo mother. Instead they believe in the power of sisterhood, of romance, and rebuilding their lives after their father’s mysterious disappearance nine years earlier. Starting anew in the small town of Iris Harbor, they see potential in all.
But Savannah’s awakening after having surgery on a life-threatening aneurysm brings a unique ability to the Delcarta sisters–together, each can predict the future with one of the five senses. And Savannah has the gift of sight.
A serial arsonist has been terrorizing the tight-knit community, and the Delcarta sisters have their suspicions on who could be to blame, including a boy who starts as an adversary to Savannah and then very quickly becomes her whole world. Investigating these crimes, trying to stop them before the next flame is sparked will call upon Savannah to use her newfound abilities with the help of her sisters, and will put each of their lives in danger.
Sight is the first book in the Delcarta Sister’s series. And I am not 100% sure the shape that the series is going to take, but this is how I hope it goes- There are 5 sisters. One set of twins and one set of triplets. Each one of them has premonitions featuring one of the five senses. This book focused on Savannah and and development of all of their gifts. Savannah has the gift of sight, but the cool thing is that if they all join hands, they can complete the vision through all of their senses. So I hope in future books that the sisters all stay together, and are all featured. Maybe with a different sister taking lead in each. Sight is a really, really cool concept. This book was a very short and quick read that kind of set the ground work for the situation I just described. It is a young adult paranormal series with a cute romance to boot.
I will tell you a little secret. Other than Savannah, I had a bit of a hard time telling the rest of the sisters apart. I couldn’t keep their names straight, and I couldn’t really distinguish their personalities. So the biggest hope that I have for the next book is that some time is really spent on making each of the sister’s their own person. They all kind of seemed the same, but I am sure that isn’t the case. I want to see more subtleties, details and differences come out in their personality in the next book in the series. I think that would help enrich the story even more.
I did really like the concept of the five of them having to be together to get a complete vision of the future. Savannah could only see what was going on, she couldn’t hear it. Or taste it. Or smell things in the background. That being said, I think there are clear winners and not such winner as far as the senses go in this case. I would love sight or hearing, but I could pass on smell. Especially in most of the visions they got. But not only did Sight lay a good framework for future books, but there was a neat little mystery of an arsonist for the girls to solve. I thought Sight was good, but I think there is potential for the next books to be even better because they can explore the sisters as individuals more and give them a little more dimension. I also want to see more of Savannah and her beau.
Top 10 Things You Didn’t Know About SIGHT.
Juliet Madison
1. I came up with the idea in a sudden flash of inspiration after waking from a dream. I saw a girl in a hospital bed, waking up, and her family was gathered around her. I remember thinking, ‘what if when she wakes up she can see the future?’ And then I thought, ‘what if they’re all holding hands and somehow this ability transfers to all of them?’ And then my idea grew… ‘what if there are five of them and the ability fragments into the five senses?’ I sat up immediately and wrote the first chapter!
2. The story was originally set in Australia. I’m an Australian, so naturally I wrote Australian characters in an Australian setting. But I made the town fictional because I knew the location might need to be changed if the book sold to an American publisher, which it did. And then during the editing process I changed all the ‘mums’ to ‘moms’, and Americanized everything.
3. The date that Savannah wakes from a coma, April 14, is my birthday. This wasn’t done on purpose, because I originally had her waking up on October 14 (random date), but because I had to Americanize the book and I had the story taking place during summer with her waking up the previous Spring, I had to change all the months and dates in the book! So the Australian Spring in October became the American Spring in April, and I laughed when I realized it was the date of my birthday. Meant to be.
4. The first draft took 20 days to write. It was the fourth book I’d written (my first took me a year!), but my first young adult story. I’d had some good feedback on the first chapter and was encouraged to write the rest, and once I started, I got really excited about the series potential and the words just flowed.
5. Savannah was originally 13 years old instead of 16. When I came up with the idea I thought it would be good to tie in her new psychic ability with becoming a teenager, but I was concerned her voice seemed a bit older. I also decided it would be easier to fit into the book market if it was a definite young adult age group, and the book was going to be dealing with some difficult themes and I wanted to be able to explore these in more detail.
6. The story was also inspired by a documentary on delta brain waves and psychic ability. Many years ago, before I became a writer, I came across a TV documentary and was fascinated by the different brain waves they were talking about, and how delta waves, which are usually only present in deep sleep and comas, were being recorded in some people while awake who declared themselves as psychic. I remembered this years later when I woke from that dream, and it helped form my idea for the series.
7. I considered making the sisters’ surname ‘Delta’ but thought it would be too cheesy! Delcarta popped into my head so I went with that. Not only does it contain all the letters to form the word ‘delta’, but also ‘car’, and this will end up being significant in the final book in the series. I’ll say no more!
8. My son designed an awesome mock cover for Sight before it was picked up for publication. We couldn’t find the owners of the images in order to buy the rights to use them, so my publisher used it as inspiration for the official cover design, which I think is awesome too!
9. The town in the story, Iris Harbor, is fictional and loosely modeled off my own! I wanted to set the story in a small seaside town, so I included a beach scene when I wrote the first chapter around five years ago. A year or so later, I unexpectedly moved to a small seaside town, and it ended up being a lot like what I imagined for the story! So I used it as a basis for working out the locations of all the places in Iris Harbor.
10. I was thinking about how JK Rowling got the idea for Harry Potter, and I thought to myself… ‘Wouldn’t it be nice if a great idea for a book series just came to me one day?’. Two weeks later – bingo. It may not be Harry Potter, but hey, I thought it was pretty cool! Ask and you will receive.
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Reading this book contributed to these challenges:
denise
having the gift of sight could be a burden, but it could be used for good
Me, My Shelf and I
Thanks so much for being on the tour!! 🙂
kindlemom1
It sounds like this has a lot of potential and a lot of room for growth as well.
Hopefully the next book will be better and the characters more fleshed out.
Daniel M
i’d take it
patty
I would take it . I like to be prepared !
Anna L
I think it would be a burden but, I would take it anyway.
bn100
take it
Sui Generis
I think I would take it!