Review: Fade by Lisa McMann

Fade by Lisa McMann (August 2010, Simon & Schuster Children's Books, ISBN: 1847387363)

First Lines:

A NEW YEAR

January 1, 2006, 1:31 am

Janie sprints through the snow yards from two streets away and slips quietly through the front door of her house.

Review: Fade is the sequel to Wake and is the middle part of the Wake trilogy. There will be some spoilers for Wake in this review.

Fade picks up shortly after the events in Wake. Janie has discovered she's a dream catcher and that she can use her talents of entering other people's dreams to help the police. The police have received an anonymous tip-off that there is a sexual predator at the high school. Janie and her boyfriend Cabel are assigned to discover if there is and if so, who is it, amongst the teaching staff at their school.

This assignment causes friction between the two as Cabel does not want her taking on this assignment and wants to protect her. Meanwhile Janie is discovering more about her "gift" from the files and a journal of the previous dream catcher.

Even when the assignment is complete, there are problems ahead for the two's long-term relationship.

I loved Wake and I also enjoyed Ms McMann's standalone, Cryer's Cross very much. I didn't enjoy Fade nearly as much as either of those two. Not because of the writing, which is as attractive and poetic as ever, but, and this is a personal reaction, rather the fact that it covers a dark subject and there are some unpleasant scenes of a sexual nature which left me with a bad taste in my mouth: there is a prolonged threat of rape both actual and in a dream. Subject matter aside though, Fade continues the development of Janie's character as she sees what's ahead for her in her life and makes some hard choices. I'm looking forward to reading Gone to see where the author takes Janie and Cabel and what the set-up will be now that they've finished high school.