We're drawn to each other, us messengers. We must be. I remember the first time I saw him, down by the beach huts. There was something about him. The look of him. How could I not go over?
Did I enjoy The Messengers? Well, I finished it, didn't I? I'll gladly admit that The Messengers isn't my typical genre. In fact, I typically avoid paranormal thrillers. So I didn't actually enjoy it.
Frances is the heroine of The Messengers. If her age is given, I couldn't find it. I found myself curious as to if she was an older teen or a younger one in several places. Family troubles have led to her living with an aunt, uncle, and cousin (Max).
In the first chapter, she meets Peter who lives or at least works in a beach hut. She's drawn to this much, much older man who paints postcards. There is something peculiar about him that she can relate to. It turns out that they both suffer from blackouts and wake up eager to draw--paint, sketch, whatever--in the minutes afterwards. He tells her something that at first seems too strange or bizarre to be true: he's a messenger, and so is she. They have been cursed--or blessed--with a visionary gift of sorts. The drawings they make--they are actual death scenes, a scene of a future that can't be changed. It is their responsibility to find the victim and show him/her the sketch. The victim will remain clueless as to what they're actually seeing. Frances is disturbed, and understandably so. He also tells her that there are rules and consequences....
The Messengers reminded me, in a way, of Person of Interest which is probably the one reason I kept reading.
The Messengers would have been just as interesting to me, perhaps even more so, if Frances had been an unreliable narrator and if things had turned out to be all in her head.
© 2015 Becky Laney of Becky's Book Reviews
