Release Date: March 19/2014
Acquired: Ecopy provided by author
Goodreads: ADD
Purchase: Amazon/Kobo Books/Book Depository
Psychic flashes, haunting visions, missing persons and visits from ghosts.
That’s just their first date.
Jack has been getting on his parents’ nerves for some time. Bad enough he’s a rock musician, has crappy grades and hangs out with his “loser” friends. But Jack’s ability to predict the future — well, that just annoys the hell out of them.
Jack’s classmate, Lauren, is said to have unique abilities too. The town still talks about when she kept badgering her mother about the money in their wall. For the longest time, Lauren’s mother didn’t listen. Finally, she did and she hasn’t had to work since.
Jack would really like to connect with Lauren but can’t figure out how. She’s never looked at him twice. But when he experiences a mystifying event involving visions, voices and spectral visits, Jack figures there’s only one person to help him understand who’s calling out to him and why. Before long, Jack and Lauren are off on a road trip of discovery that could provide answers to a mystery left unsolved for twenty years. More importantly, they might even unravel the greatest mystery of all — how every so often someone will accept you for who you are.
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Dear Streetlights Like Fireworks, I want to write you a love letter, I wanted to the second I turned your last page. Instead, I laid back on my bed, and allowed every SCREAMING emotion to take over my heart. I welcomed every feeling of awe, and pain, and longing, and freedom. That's what you felt like to me, you felt like freedom. How did you know that I needed you? I will never be without your words, in my head..in my very BEING. You told me a story that I needed to hear, something that I know now, I won't ever be able to stop talking about, or remembering. You were written for me, there's no doubt in my mind.
David Pandolfe, you wizard of words, you absolute heart-string tugging GENIUS. I already knew I was going into Streetlights Like Fireworks prepared to enjoy it, as I've had the pleasure of reading Jump When Ready, and experienced similar feelings of elation. However, this new novel was in a class all on it's on, now stashed away in it's own special compartment in my heart. Jack is psychic, plain and simple, there's no getting around the fact that his ability to sense things, makes him different than everyone else in his life. Except Lauren. Who seems to be hiding abilities of her own. When Jack experiences a particularly intense psychic moment with a guitar, which included a vision of a red-haired woman, he knows he can no longer avoid the truth: he's special, and someone is trying to tell him something. One thing definitely leads to another, and soon Jack and Lauren are on a cross-country road trip to decipher Jack's visions, and, Jack hopes, to find the connection he KNOWS they share.
I'm not sure I needed to say anything beyond "road trip," to convince you that this book was every kind of wonderful. It was a mere 286 pages, but I could have sworn I read 800. There was such STRENGTH, and emotional detail in Jack's back story, such a solid tone of mystical uncertainty, and plain human curiousity: Jack yearns to figure out why he's so different, both mentally, AND physically, from the rest of his family. He's always felt like the one on the outside, looking in. There were few side characters, but each introduction of someone new felt like coming home. David has such an innate ability to craft a character so that you feel like you've known them ALL your life. I couldn't get enough of Tohru and Shakeesha, they were mesmerizing, and hilarious, and I wanted to jump into the pages and claim them as my OWN friends.
Seattle, Missouri, Denver...were only a FEW of Jack and Lauren's destinations, and there was absolutely no slacking on detail when it came to describing these beautiful locations. David Pandolfe had my senses FIGHTING for front seats, the way he seemed to capture every building, every glint of light on a window pane-I swear to you I FELT the heat rising from the concrete while Jack and Lauren walked. There is a scene near the conclusion, where the characters sit on a back porch watching the sea, and an expanse of mountains, and I say to you, with not one TRACE of a lie: my heart exploded. It completely shattered, and I sighed the sigh of the happiest person as I gathered the pieces back up. I cannot express to you with my useless WORDS, exactly what Streetlights Like Fireworks will do to you. This book is PURE feeling. It is a bounded SOUL.
There is a dangerous NEED for this author to be picked up, and seen, by the big 3 in publishing. I cannot wait for the day that I see David Pandolfe's books gleaming from every single bookstore shelf possible. His writing ranks with the likes of John Green, or David Levithan, and quite possibly, even exceeds them.
You will not be sorry that you picked up this book, so..I ask you, what are you waiting for?
Recommended for fans of: Contemporary, Mystery, Paranormal, Teen Romance, John Green, David Levithan, Markus Zusak.
Challenges: Goodreads 100 Book Goal
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David Pandolfe is the author of two novels, Jump When Ready and Streetlights Like Fireworks. Currently, he’s working on a sequel to Jump When Ready, to be published in 2014. His short fiction has also appeared in literary reviews.
While he’s still writing about himself in third-person, David should probably also mention that he lives outside Richmond, VA, with his wife, two kids and a dog who’s terrified of thunder (not the best situation since it thunders from spring until fall in Richmond).
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a Rafflecopter giveaway
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Thank-you to the girls from Book Nerd Tours for hosting this tour, and to David Pandolfe for sending me a ecopy to review!
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