Book Review: Farsighted by Emlyn Chand

I got this book from Amazon when it was free for a brief period. I saw a link about it on Twitter and since I’m a sucker for free books, I downloaded it. I wasn’t able to get to it for weeks though. I finally gave it a go since I’ve been reading about it everywhere on my newsfeeds.

Farsighted by Emlyn Chand is about Alex, blind since birth and deemed an outcast by his peers. He has no friends until a nice new girl comes to town. Simmi sincerely wants to be friends with Alex and things starts to look up. Unfortunately for Alex, he also discovers a new ability. He has “visions” of the future and sometimes it gets him in awkward situations. No matter how hard he tries, Alex can’t escape his new ability, especially when he starts seeing visions of Simmi in danger. Alex gains the help of new friends and discovers more about his new sight. This book is about his journey to change the events in his visions. — Check out Farsighted on Goodreads.

My thoughts

This book was a pretty easy read and rightly so because it is intended for the young ‘uns after all. But it is also a nice read for the, er, more mature young-at-heart folks. I enjoyed this book because it’s about psychic abilities and other paranormal stuff that I think need to be explored more in books! I liked the writing; it was simple and flowed easily.  I also liked the very diverse characters. I thought they worked well together, and I always love it when authors create characters that are unique and different from the usual.

One of the amazing things about the book is that it’s told from the perspective of our main character Alex, who, in case you missed it, is blind. We are used to reading stories from the perspective of someone who has all his five senses intact, so this is certainly something nice, different, and interesting.

The book kind of reminds me of my favorite scene from the movie Babel. One of the main characters in that movie is a deaf girl and there’s one scene where she’s in a club and the movie peeps do a sort of sudden shift in perspective. One second it’s loud and noisy, and the next second it’s completely silent while everyone’s dancing and laughing, and then it goes back to loud and noisy. I thought that was cool. Farsighted is cool in that sense, too, only it’s one big shift in perspective all throughout. Wait, sudden random thought.. I wonder how different the “reading” experience would be if this was an audio book and you listened to it in the dark or blindfolded.. Hmm eeen-ter-esting.

Okay, shift back to this review(see what I did there? LOL.). The next book in the series will be from the perspective of Simmi. Simmi’s quite an interesting character so I am looking forward to that. I recommend Farsighted to anyone who likes stories about psychic abilities and anyone who just enjoys a nifty series.

I got this book from Amazon. All opinions and views expressed here are my own.

About the Author

Emlyn Chand emerged from the womb with a fountain pen clutched in her left hand (true story). Since then, she has always loved to hear and tell stories. When she’s not writing, she runs a large book club in Ann Arbor and is the president of author PR firm Novel Publicity. Emlyn enjoys connecting with readers and is available throughout the social media Internet world. Visit www.emlynchand.com for more info. Don’t forget to say “hi” to her sun conure Ducky!