Book Review: Clarity

TITLE: Clarity
Book 1 in a new series
AUTHOR: Kim Harrington
PUBLISHED: 2011
CATEGORY: Young adult
GENRE: Paranormal, mystery
PREMISE: a girl uses her powers to help catch a killer.
MY REVIEW: Clarity, aka Clare has a gift where she can see visions by touching people or objects. Her whole family has gifts like this. Her mom is telepathic and her brother talks to ghosts. In a small town they're great for tourists. But that doesn't exactly make her popular with her peers. Then her ex shows up with a proposition to use her gifts to find a killer.
I freaking loved this book. It helped that it had a bunch of things I loved: avoidance of YA tropes, fiesty heroine who's not over-the-top badass and actually has a personality, murder mystery, paranormal gifts, and small towns with wide varieties of characters who aren't stereotyped to death and NO ANGSTING. Granted there was the obligatory love triangle but this is a love triangle I understand and can tolerate. The three people dealt with it and no one was made out to be a bad guy or annoyance like what usually happens in these love triangles and it was secondary to the plot which was mostly about the mystery. Which is how it should be unless your book is strictly romance.
The writing was decent, the plot was interesting, I wasn't bored while reading it and I loved all the characters who were niceley well-rounded. This is a very good debut book. I can't believe it hasn't gotten more buzz then it has. Oh well, c'est la vie. This is the first in a new series apparently and I must say I can't wait to read the next one. Sadly I have to wait a year ;pouts;
WHO SHOULD READ: fans of Medium, fans of paranormal books, fans of The Mediator series
MY RATING: Four and a half out of Five gifts.