At $0.99 for the Kindle version at Amazon.com, I couldn’t resist snagging this tale by one of my favorite Short Story authors, Jen Wylie.
Sometimes death is only the beginning…
Even after the bad day she’s had, Cassy is still surprised to find herself shot, an innocent bystander in a drive by shooting. Bleeding to death in an empty parking lot, she knows she is going die.
What she doesn’t expect, is the arrival of a strange, and unnaturally handsome, man who tells her he can keep her from passing on in return for being his forever. In desperation, she agrees but afterwards she is beyond dismayed to discover she has died.
To make matters worse, the stranger has disappeared, leaving her spirit to wander through a series of worlds unknown to her. Her existence is one of fear and loneliness, until she meets another like her and discovers she’s not a ghost at all but something much more.
I’m not typically a fan of short stories. It seems that things are inevitably rushed, or important details are left out, and I’m often left wondering why I bothered.
This is not the case with The Forgotten Echo. The lack of details actually works for the story, because we get to feel just as confused as Cassy. Everything happens so quickly for her from the moment she is shot in a drive-by shooting, and the sense of bewilderment and slightly hallucinogenic experience in the parking lot, along with the first person point of view really helps the reader to become completely submerged in Cassy’s experiences.
What worked for me:
- First person POV’s in Jen’s stories always help put me right into the action, and I find myself forgetting that I’m reading until real life begins to intrude.
- As scarce as the details were, I still loved the world building. I loved the concept of the Real World and the Otherworld, and the Inbetween was even more intriguing.
- I liked Echo and her friendship with Cassy, and how their relationship changed as Cassy started to keep secrets, and became wary of the secrets that Echo was obviously keeping from her.
- I’ve secretly (or not so secretly) got the hots for Devon *waggles eyebrows*
What didn’t work for me:
- There were a few very minor grammar mistakes that drew my eye, though these weren’t big enough to really detract from the entertainment.
As with every other book/story that is the beginning of a series, I’m grumpy that there aren’t more books out yet for me to read lol That said, I do feel that it ended at a good stopping point rather than a big cliff hanger, and I will definitely be buying new stories in the series when they are released.
4.5/5
