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    Light Beneath Ferns
    Light Beneath Ferns
    Light Beneath Ferns
    Ebook189 pages4 hours

    Light Beneath Ferns

    By Anne Spollen

    3.5/5

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    About this ebook

    I have this strange sense that my silence is preparing me for something I can't name . . . Elizah Rayne is nothing like other fourteen-year-old girls. More interested in bird bones than people, she wraps herself in silence. Trying to escape the shadow of her gambler father, Elizah and her mother move into an old house that borders a cemetery. All her mother wants is for them to have "normal" lives. But that becomes impossible for Elizah when she finds a human jawbone by the river and meets Nathaniel, a strangely hypnotic boy who draws Elizah into his dreamlike and mysterious world. Only by forgetting everything she knows can Elizah understand the truth about Nathaniel—and discover an unimaginable secret.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherFlux
    Release dateSep 8, 2010
    ISBN9780738721897
    Light Beneath Ferns
    Author

    Anne Spollen

    Anne Spollen is the mother of three children. Her fiction and poetry have appeared in numerous anthologies and journals and have been nominated for Pushcart prizes. The Shape of Water is her first novel for teenagers. It began as a short story in Orchid: a Literary Review. She lives in New York.

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    Reviews for Light Beneath Ferns

    3.5/5

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    • 2/5
      LIGHT BENEATH THE FERNS is a great suspense story and ends in a semi-cliffhanger. It starts off with the promise of a horror story but ends with a lighter mystery. Yes, ghosts are a big part of the story, but it's no scary. The main character was a bit unreal for my taste- just unreal. There was a bit of plastic on her that didn't seem real. I liked how she kept her character, even with Nathaniel, because it seems more real than her becoming nice and shy and dimpled around him. Even more than her trying not to say anything other than nice things. The thing about Kyle was unreal, too, how he doesn't get mad at her for giving him stitches to to the side of his head. Especially in basket ball season when he'll have to miss a couple of games. I found myself wishing I wasn't reading it at some points, and didn't feel very rewarded at the end. But it was an OK read, nothing else. It didn't keep my interest as well as I thought it would when I found it on the shelf at the library. But, oh, well. I know many other people who would enjoy a lot. If you like not-too-scary "horror stories" this is probably the one for you.
    • 4/5
      14-year-old Elizah and her mother have just moved to the small town of Wenspaugh, New York to get away from her gambling addict father. In Wenspaugh, Elizah, who has always been different from other girls—quiet, preferring to spend time alone in the graveyard beside her new home—is forced to interact with various adults who think they know what’s best for her. Then falls for Nathaniel, a strange boy she met in the woods, who speaks cryptically and shows her things that, at second glance, don’t appear to be what they seem. Who is Nathaniel and what does he want from Elizah?LIGHT BENEATH FERNS is a beautifully written book that will chill you to your bones. If you appreciate poetic language and want to be spooked, this book is the one for you.The strongest part of this book is its language. Anne Spollen strings words and descriptive language together in chains that I would never have thought possible—until I read it from her. The dreamy language transports you into half-mystical Wenspaugh and sets you right in the middle of Elizah’s tiny high school, the graveyard, and the mysterious woods.Elizah is not the protagonist for everyone. She’s cynical to the point of being a little depressing, sarcastic to the point of being rude, and seems to change very little throughout the course of the novel. While I love and admire snarky, well-written dialogue, the number of times that Elizah clashed verbally with other characters quickly grew tiring for me.Elizah is essentially a strong and well-developed protagonist, and may not have developed throughout the novel, but I was still surprised at the inconsistency of her character when it came to her interactions with Nathaniel. Many times I felt that the story was trying to force Nathaniel and Elizah upon one another, eschewing typical relationship development and trying to make it out that they had a connection before they even met. As a result, the romance was disappointing to me, their interactions based upon sensation but little substance.LIGHT BENEATH FERNS is a story that revolves, surprisingly, not around the strong, albeit unchanging, characters, but rather the creepy element. It’s an interesting mix of snarky dialogue, poetic language, and the paranormal. That unconventional combination of genre and stylistic techniques may be its selling point for some people. It could also be its downfall: many times I found myself struggling to fit the book’s many parts together into one cohesive whole. Check it out, and see what it is for you.

    Book preview

    Light Beneath Ferns - Anne Spollen

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