Maybe it's the winter, but I've found myself reading some fairly heavy books lately. The Secret of Raven Point and The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry come immediately to mind. My natural literary tastes run along some pretty dark themes, but every now and then I just have to pick up something that I'll take a little less seriously. Scintillate is the first novel in Tracy Clark's Light Key Trilogy, and since she received an SCBWI (Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators) grant to complete it, I was interested enough to pick it up.
Cora ends up mysteriously ill in the hospital one night, and once she comes home to her dad and step-mom she's still not convinced that she's recovered: she can see colorful halos of light around every person, full of changing colors. But when she tells her father about it he dismisses it, and Cora is led to believe that it has something to do with her mother, Grace, who disappeared in Ireland before Cora's dad moved them to California. She begins to look for clues, unraveling the mystery that connects her own strange vision to her missing mother. What she discovers is that these same abilities are what might have put Grace in danger, and that further answers lie back in Ireland, where Cora grew up.
But Cora's abilities are about to put her in danger too. While other people have colored auras that change with their moods, Cora's is a bright silver. She's seen a man chasing her, someone with a pure white aura, and there's nobody to whom she can turn for answers. So with the help of her two best friends, Cora makes her escape alone to Ireland to search for answers about her mother and also herself.
Sounds like an interesting story, right? Innovative combinations of Irish folklore and aural powers, adventure and magic. I'm sorry to say that the promising premise was lost and confused under the weight of bad execution and enough hormonal teenage drama to choke a yak. Everything that Cora does and discovers is overshadowed by a reciprocal obsession between herself and an Irish exchange student, Finn. Yes, it's high school and hormones are raging. Drama and emotional roller coasters are to be expected. But I haven't read a relationship this unhealthy since Twilight. There turns out to be a deeper reason for the obsession, but that doesn't turn up until near the end, and in the mean time all sorts of red flags were popping up in my mind.
There were also an incredible number of seemingly important details that were never explained or even addressed. We don't know what about Cora's sudden illness triggered her abilities, and random tattoos start appearing on her whenever she reads the memories from an object. But the biggest one that sticks out for me is the key that she uncovers. The entire trilogy is centered around a "Light Key," and it features prominently on the cover. But aside from being dug up and mysteriously tattooed on Cora's arm, the key features not at all in the story. She wears it around her neck, and it gets taken from her. That's it. Its presence or symbolism is never explained or even hinted at, which strikes me as a big flaw in a trilogy that seemingly centers around it. As a reader, I was given no real reason to care about it.
In the midst of the muck though, there were a couple of things that I appreciated in the story. Duncan, Cora's best guy friend, made me giggle with his Irish-themed teasing about Finn. It wasn't very imaginative, but it really was amusing. And Cora is, from what I managed to gather, supposed to be fat. There are a few passing moments in the book that refer to tight jeans making her thighs look awful, or taking after her Chilean dad's "empanada-eating" side of the family. Finn's mother even takes a jab at her for it. But this quality that sets her apart from a lot of stereotypical female protagonists in the genre isn't ever really addressed beyond these occasional comments that imply a body type that's not a size 2. Cora might gain a little more depth as a character if the author were to bring that aspect of the story more into focus.
Of course, if Clark were to do that, she'd have to get rid of some other subjects that are cluttering up the story. Missing mother, overprotective dad, romantic drama, mysterious memories and tattoos, attempted murder, kidnapping, madness, mysterious deaths, and.....dark energy? Yup. It's revealed that some of what's going on is, according to Cora's father, a result of unbalanced dark energy. As I've mentioned before, I'm a little bit of a science junkie, so I get a little judgmental when authors don't give what I think is an accurate representation for something like dark energy. Adding that on top of a mountain of folklore, elusive first peoples and auras makes my head spin. There's just too much going on here, and the result seems to be that none of it gets covered sufficiently.
I can safely say that I'm not going to read the other two books in the Light Key Trilogy. But if you liked anything by Amelia Atwater-Rhodes or the YA paranormal romance Blood and Chocolate, you may appreciate Scintillate by Tracy Clark more than I did. You can find it now at your favorite local indie bookstore.
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