Book Review: Light Beneath Ferns

Light Beneath Ferns by Anne Spollen

Released: February 1, 2010
Publisher: Flux
Pages: 206
Rating: 3 stars

Elizah Rayne is nothing like other fourteen-year-old girls. More interested in bird bones than people, she wraps herself in silence. Trying to escape the shadow of her gambler father, Elizah and her mother move into an old house that borders a cemetery. All her mother wants is for them to have "normal" lives. But that becomes impossible for Elizah when she finds a human jawbone by the river and meets Nathaniel, a strangely hypnotic and mysterious boy who draws Elizah into his world.

Only by forgetting everything she knows can Elizah understand the truth about Nathaniel—and discover an unimaginable secret.

I'm still unsure of what to think about this novel. There were parts of the story that I enjoyed reading and other parts that made me dislike the novel. I must say that Light Beneath Ferns is beautifully and uniquely written. Spollen's descriptive language set a creepy feel to the book, which is one of the things I enjoyed most.

I do feel that the language could either make or break Light Beneath Ferns. Considering the story revolves mostly around the setting and not so much the characters, there is a lot of descriptions and not a lot of dialogue between characters. At times, I found myself struggling to put the story's many puzzle pieces together to form the big picture.

The thing that bothered me the most was Elizah. Most of the time I just wanted to slap her. I found her to be rude and a little depressing. She has family issues (just like everyone else) and I can somewhat see why she may act the way she does, but I really didn't care for her negative personality, which didn't seem to change much throughout the novel.

Light Beneath Ferns has its good parts and bad parts but overall it was an okay novel.