Luminous [Hardcover]

Dawn Metcalf (Author)

Book Description

Release date: June 30, 2011

As reality slips and time stands still, Consuela finds herself thrust into the world of the Flow. Removed from all she loves into this shifting world overlapping our own, Consuela quickly discovers she has the power to step out of her earthly skin and cloak herself in new ones-skins made from the world around her, crafted from water, fire, air. She is joined by other teens with extraordinary abilities, bound together to safeguard a world they can affect, but where they no longer belong.

When murder threatens to undo the Flow, the Watcher charges Consuela and elusive, attractive V to stop the killer. But the psychopath who threatens her new world may also hold the only key to Consuela's way home.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Dawn Metcalf lives in Connecticut with her family. This is her first novel.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 384 pages
• Publisher: Dutton Juvenile; 1 edition (June 30, 2011)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0525422471
• ISBN-13: 978-0525422471
• Product Dimensions: 5.9 x 1.2 x 8.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (16 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,363,984 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Dawn Metcalf has no good excuse for the way she writes. She lived in a normal, loving, suburban home, studied hard, went to college, went to graduate school, got married, had babies, and settled down in northern Connecticut. Despite this wholesome lifestyle, she has clearly been corrupted by fairy tales, puppet visionaries, British humour, and graphic novels. As a result, she writes dark, quirky, and sometimes humorous speculative fiction.

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars Intriguing and original; yet a bit vague at times June 30, 2011

By Karissa Eckert TOP 1000 REVIEWER

Format:Hardcover

I was drawn to this book by the beautiful cover and then read the synopsis and found it intriguing. I actually received an Advanced Reading Copy of it through Librarything's Early Reviewer Program. It was a very creative book and has some intriguing ideas in it; although at points the writing is a bit hard to follow.

Consuela finds a lump at the back of her neck and is worried about it. Her mother agrees that Consuela will go to the doctor if it is worse in the morning. Then Consuela finds that she can put her fingers into the lump and actually remove all of her skin; leaving her a glowing Skeleton. She finds she can makes new skins out of things like water and air. While experimenting she ends up meeting other teenagers with strange powers and finds herself part of the Flow. A serial killer is loose in the Flow and Consuela must figure out how to stop the killer, otherwise she may never have the chance to return home.

This was an odd book. It is very creative and has some really neat ideas in it. At times it is beautifully written and has some excellent imagery. At times though there were also things that didn't make sense. Why only teenagers in the Flow? Why was she able to talk to her mother when she got home in the beginning but not later?

The idea of the Flow is interesting, but I have to say it is a bit difficult for the reader to figure out what is going on at the beginning of the book. The reader needs to suspend disbelief and kind of just..well..go with the flow of the story. As the book went on I understood better the kind of "other place" the author was trying to create, but it did take some piecing together to get to that point.

The characters are intriguing. All of them have different powers and complex backgrounds. While I did find them interesting, they never really came alive for me. The book seemed more focused on what they could do in the Flow than on who they were and what they thought. This was complicated by the fact that there wasn't supposed to be much emotion in the Flow itself.

The story gets a bit creepy at points. The whole concept of Consuela peeling off her own skin weirded me out a bit, as did the fact she traipsed around as a skeleton. There were portions involving the serial killer that were also a bit unsettling; although they never got too scary for me.

The story ends well and in such a way that there could be more adventures involving Consuela, although I haven't heard anything about that. As for the author's writing style, I am a bit on the fence about it. Metcalf's writing has moments of beauty, but it also had times where things were kind of vague. It wasn't the easiest writing to read and you had to read it very slowly and carefully to make sure you understood what was happening.

Overall a very intriguing read. If you are interested in reading something unlike anything you've read before definitely pick this story up. The concepts of the Flow and how Consuela can makes skins out of organic matter are interesting. The story does get a bit creepy, but should be appropriate for young adult and older. The writing style wasn't my favorite and the characters weren't as engaging as I would have liked. Still this book was very original and interesting, so I would recommend it for people who want something a bit different.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful

3.0 out of 5 stars Hold off for authors next book October 7, 2012

By Ramplo

Format:Kindle Edition

Quick & Dirty:

-Repetitive descriptions that manage to miss key points

-Running around as a skeleton is strange and kinda creepy

-The main relationship was weird and...just bland

-Decent story with an interesting concept, you might want to wait for the authors next book though.

Long & Wordy:

Fair warning, there are things in here some people would consider spoilers so just a heads up. That and this is a bit of a jumbled mess, there just isn't a good order to put it all in.

The general idea of this book is that Consuela goes into a coma on Earth and ends up in the Flow which is this between worlds type of place where the 'residents' (about 5 or 6 total, all from English speaking countries, if not just the US...that's never explained but it is a very elite club) anyway these residents are pulled back to Earth on occasion to come and keep us lowly humans from committing suicide. But don't call them angels because they will go back and mock you while getting smashed on alcohol. Consuela can't wait to bust out of this imperfect world so she can go home, and gets the offer...from the one guy trying to destroy the world! But why would he save her? Probably because he can't figure out how to kill a skeleton...

So there are lots of things about this book that I liked and plenty of other things that just rubbed me the wrong way.

Liked: The idea of her being able to change her strengths
Disliked: Her pulling off her skin and running around as a skeleton
Liked: Being able to harness elements
Disliked: The descriptions, they were very wordy about some parts but lets take her air skin for example, she's a SKELETON do you see THROUGH the air to her bones or does she BECOME air?

So you get the idea. But really her walking around as a skeleton weirded me out.

About her skeleton, in the beginning she kept talking about her forever smile, but towards the end she said something along the lines of not being able to see her smile (**I'll look that up when I have some more time) so I just don't know what's going on.

It's also kinda weird that she can keep hearing V's thoughts...just sayin.

By the end I felt like I had skipped a few chapters or something because the things the whole major battle hinged on made NO SENSE to me. You found Coyote's hole? What? Maybe I was just sleep reading and did miss it...I really have no idea what happened there.

She mentions a few times that there are lots of people coming and going from the Flow, and that there are new people every day but somehow only about 5 people show up there...and they've been there for a while. Weird.

And what's with the binge drinking teens!? Yeah, never ending bottle, let's get smashed and run around like jerks! I'm sorry, like alcoholic angels.

Onto some character relationships
I had SO much hope for her and V and their relationship was so...bland. It was hard to tell a lot of times what was really going on.
...
I think that's all I'm really going to say about the relationships (except that at the end of the book we have ANOTHER example of a book that seems to be promoting these super creepy stalker like boyfriends and glorifying them)

Read through the reviews, this book might be for you. I would be willing to read a different book by this author, but this one just didn't do it for me.

***I received this book as an ARC. This did not effect my review in any way.***

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars Neat concept and execution February 12, 2012

By brandileigh2003

Format:Hardcover

Luminous is well crafted story and it kept me intrigued the whole way through. This is such a neat concept and Ms. Metcalf executed it so well. The characters were rich and developed... they also held mystery--there were layers to everyone we met, and they all played specific roles that I didn't fully understand until the end where they all wove together so beautifully.
There was just a touch of romance, and it really added to the story for me. It had me wondering for a bit, just like Consuela, what were the real motivations.
The idea of the flow, and their purpose being to save others really appealled to me. The addition of Tender and the mystery surrounding him was interesting. And when his whole story unfolded I was blown away.
The relationships between the teens in the flow were very believable for me, and at the end I still wanted to know more about the secondary characters--were those wards because they were in love, and what were each's wishes.
I def. recommend to give this a try.