It’s a normal day for Sunshine as she takes the seat at her desk as receptionist at the Lyden Times until the tragedy of a young nameless woman floods the newsroom. Her head and body covered in bloody gashes and fresh bruises. Sunshine forms an immediate interest and digs into her life. After learning her identity, Eilida, she pokes around her hometown where she is mistaken for Eilida. Soon Sunshine’s world crashes. Everything she loved begins to fade. She trades in her skirts and heels for jeans and sneakers. A ghost avails itself to her and a man with eyes dark as coal stalks her dreams and waking nightmares. Her fiancé worries as he can’t wrap his mind around her transformation yet refuses to let go. Time ticks down as their wedding date approaches on the anniversary of a day that changed Eilida’s life forever…
My Review: 5 STARS
Eye of the Storm is a brilliant, intense, and shocking novella.
Sunshine is the epitome of her name. Her life is perfect—from her job at the local newspaper despite a few annoying co-workers to her wealthy boyfriend who is days from proposing—and full of sunshine until a “Jane Doe” shows up at the local hospital and sends her life into a tailspin. Not only does the woman’s appearance become the main focus of the newspaper, but she become Sunshine’s. Feeling attached to the woman somehow, Sunshine sets out to find out who she is and what happened to her.
In her pursuit to find out all she can about this woman, Sunshine begins to suffer memory loss, hallucinations, and dreams of a life she didn’t live. Her connection to Eilida, the woman in the hospital, becomes apparent, but the how they are related remains a mystery to Sunshine.
Things happen in the novel that seemingly don’t make sense, like how can Eilida’s boyfriend not know she is in the hospital when Eilida’s roommate, parents, and school all know, and they frustrated me at first because I honestly thought they were holes in the plot. I was wrong, boy was I wrong. Okay, so if I say much more, I’ll be giving too much away, and you have to read this for yourself to find out the big twist ending.
One more thing, the epilogue will definitely, leave you wanting the next book in the trilogy. Speaking of…
Oh, I forgot to mention that I listened to the audio version of this novella (a complimentary copy from the author in exchange for an honest review), and the narrator made a perfect Sunshine. At first I thought she sounded too young, but once I got to know Sunshine and just how sweet and innocent she is, I knew the narrator was perfect for her.
