Fic­tion

Echo After Echo

Amy Rose Capetta
  • Review
By – August 18, 2017

Zara Evans stands in the Aure­lia The­ater, breath­ing it in. This is the life she dreams of, the call she answers when she audi­tions for the part of Echo, in a play she has loved since she was twelve. And the part mag­i­cal­ly goes to her. She eager­ly toss­es aside her dull life as a senior in a small high school in an unre­mark­able town. New York is where she belongs.

Enter Eli, young appren­tice to Roscoe, the mas­ter light tech­ni­cian. Eli sees some­thing spe­cial in Zara, some­thing that goes far deep­er than her act­ing abil­i­ty. She must get to know this actress better.

Then the unthink­able hap­pens. The theater’s curse comes to life and Zara finds Roscoe’s life­less body, the result of a hor­ri­ble acci­dent. But this curse comes in threes. After a sec­ond cast mem­ber is found dead, Zara fears she will be the one to com­plete the curse.

Echo After Echo cap­ti­vates the read­er from its ear­li­est pages. Each chap­ter is writ­ten from a dif­fer­ent character’s point of view, yet each car­ries the sto­ry rac­ing for­ward. It is an action-packed, sus­pense­ful tale. Just when the read­er thinks s/​he knows what’s real­ly going on, a dif­fer­ent char­ac­ter takes over the nar­ra­tion, spin­ning the reader’s thoughts in a dif­fer­ent direc­tion, keep­ing just one step ahead of the read­er until the end catch­es us com­plete­ly by surprise.

The rela­tion­ship that blos­soms between Zara and Eli places this excel­lent nov­el into the YA range, but the sto­ry is also one of friend­ship, mys­tery, and pas­sion. High­ly rec­om­mend­ed for ages 16 and up.

Mar­cia Ber­neger is a retired teacher who lives with her hus­band and three crazy dogs. She taught both first and sec­ond grade, as well as spe­cial edu­ca­tion. She cur­rent­ly teach­es Torah school, in addi­tion to her vol­un­teer work in class­rooms, libraries, and with var­i­ous fundrais­ers. She lives in San Diego.

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