Manifest by Artist Arthur Series: Mystyx #1
Published by Harlequin Teen on August 1st 2010
Pages: 256
Goodreads
When fifteen-year-old Krystal Bentley moves to Lincoln, Connecticut, her mom's hometown, she assumes her biggest drama will be adjusting to the burbs after living in New York City.
But Lincoln is nothing like Krystal imagined. The weirdness begins when Ricky Watson starts confiding in her. He's cute, funny, a good listener—and everything she'd ever want—except that he was killed nearly a year ago. Krystal's ghost-whispering talents soon lead other "freaks" to her door—Sasha, a rich girl who can literally disappear, and Jake, who moves objects with his mind. All three share a distinctive birthmark in the shape of an M and, fittingly, call themselves the Mystyx. They set out to learn what really happened to Ricky, only to realize that they aren't the only ones with mysterious powers. But if Krystal succeeds in finding out the truth about Ricky's death, will she lose him for good?
Here is where the book fell a little short for me. It felt a little cliche personally and I guess I really don't understand how you can fall in love with a ghost. But teens are teens and overall, it had a great supernatural feel to it, with a decent balance of growing friendships and a mystery to solve.
Probably the best part of the book were the characters. There was such diversity, we have the somewhat normal teen girl – our main character Krystal – who is knew and just sort of fits in. There's the popular annoying and mean girl, the good looking African American ghost, and then the boy from the other side of the tracks who has more responsibility at home than the two girls combined. I will probably read the rest of the books to get a closer look at the other two characters with special gifts.
Final Verdict: Definitely has a lot of teen issues in it – dealing with parents who aren't around, moving to a new place and school, feeling responsible for things out of your control… and most of all just trying to be yourself.
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Sounds interesting. I love the format of your reviews by the way. I know you’ve been doing it for a bit now, but I really like how it’s set up. This one doesn’t sound like one I’d make room for at the moment, but I really liked your review. Thanks so much for sharing it!
This one definitely didn’t do it for me either. It has a good concept but I just couldn’t get into it.
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I enjoyed Manifest. I honestly can’t wait to read the next one.
I enjoyed this too, even gave it a better rating than you, though it sounds like you enjoyed it more than me. (Maybe I need to get tougher with my ratings) But Krystal bugged the heck out of me! The angst, the whining, the moaning … somebody rescue me! I enjoyed everyone else though and thought the plot was really fun. I’m probably going to read the others as well.
http://back-to-books.blogspot.com/2010/07/142-manifest-by-artist-arthur.html
I liked the idea of this book but it was a 3/5 for me too. It was just pretty slow for me.