A Book Review - Second Sight by Sinclair Smith (Point Horror)

I actually have finally gotten around to reviewing some of the books I've been reading lately. They're not *great* reviews (like my friend Gaele's) - because, well, a) I don't get paid for reading and reviewing, and therefore don't have the time (or energy!) to make them pristine, and b) Most of the books I've been reading lately are of either the cheesy teenage Point Horror or the cheesy adult Harlequin / Silhouette / Mills & Boon type, and neither of those are the type of books where readers expect fabulously written reviews.

I may eventually put these in a blog of their own, if I find that I get to writing reviews for all the books I read, but for now they'll make a home here. You can also find all my book-related stuff on my Goodreads profile.


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I read this once when I was a kid, and remembered it vaguely. This week, after seeing it on a list of Point Horror books and thinking, "I kinda liked that one, I think," I ordered it from eBay. Devoured it in an afternoon. I'm not sure if it's just because I've only read it twice, but I really did enjoy this book.

When we meet Grayson, she's just got her sight back after a restorative operation, having been blind for several years. She's a little unsteady on her feet, but she's getting better. Unfortunately her vision doesn't come free. She's started having visions of people being pushed to their death. She reads about a celebrity who died falling off his balcony, and assumes that he was the one in her visions - but the location doesn't quite match up. And then she realises that there's to be more than one murder, and that each vision incorporates pieces from the next one. Her doctor doesn't believe her, but she manages to enlist the help of a police detective, and is shocked to find out that the cornea transplant that restored her sight came from a psychic who worked with the police. The murderer somehow knows that she's seeing things, though, and will do anything to stop her.

There are holes in the plot. Of course there are. Firstly, I don't know a lot of police detectives that are happy to work with psychics, particularly untested teenage ones. (I do know quite a few psychics.) Secondly, the motivations for the killer are very thin, and never properly explained. What explanation there is seems quite random. The name of the killer is the same as the name of her friend's boyfriend - who we never meet - but it's never explained whether this is coincidence, or whether the friend's actually been dating the killer.

That said, I enjoyed the book a lot. Grayson is a pleasant heroine who I would like as a friend. Her love interest is sexy and intriguing. The neighbor girl that she makes friends with early in the book is fun and light, and the parties that she gives provide a background to see a different side to Grayson from the serious recent-invalid that she is during the rest of the book. The New York City setting provides a nice respite from the usual small towns that you usually find in Point Horror. The suspense was good, and I didn't have a clue who the killer might be - I had three or four people who I suspected heavily, but didn't know which, if any, it was.

What I liked most about the book, though, is the way Sinclair Smith treated Grayson's psychic ability. This next sentence may completely rob me of any credibility that I've had thus far, but here goes: I am a psychic. Sort-of-kind-of-a-bit. I'm an empath with some very limited psychometric and future-telling abilities. And I cannot tell you how tired I get of programs like Medium (which I find annoying as hell) and Ghost Whisperer (which I do actually like) and myriad books where the psychic hero or heroine is reliable, even infallible. Because it just doesn't work like that, ya know? I've never met a psychic yet who was totally reliable in their visions and / or predictions, although I've certainly met some who are better at it than I am. Mostly we muddle around, and if it helps at all with things, it's only a bit. But books and movies and television shows treat it as this great Powerful Supernatural Gift (you can almost hear the capital letters when people say it) that makes it easy to get any answers that you're looking for.

Second Sight didn't do that. Grayson made mistakes. It took her a while to realise that her visions were getting mixed up, and that the locations of the murders and attempted murders weren't exactly the way she saw them. And she mucked up when it came to identifying the killer. For a reason that was later explained, but still. And I really liked that. It made it a story about an ordinary girl with some psychic ability instead of a story about a psychic, if that makes any sense.

Verdict: A plot full of holes, but enough charm to more than make up for it.