Touching the Surface by Kimberly Sabatini

 

Details:

Pages: 352

Edition: Kindle

Publisher/Date: Simon Pulse (October 30, 2012)

Price: $8.89 on Amazon

★★★★★☆☆☆☆☆

Touching the Surface tried to be profound – and maybe if I’d been reading it between lunch and 5^th period I might have thought it was. But it seemed any significance I came away with at the end I’d already learned sometime before getting my high school diploma.

Elliot, or at least that’s her “current” (?) identity is a third-timer at the Obmil. Contrary to my initial thoughts, the Obmil isn’t a strange-shaped windmill or a nightclub in the Netherlands, it’s a resort-style-rehab for the recently departed who died without learning some greater message about their previous life on earth. Kind of like Promises, Malibu, for spirit screw-ups.

Elliot was a 17-year-old girl when she died in her most recent life, but she doesn’t remember how it happened or why she’s back at the Obmil. To find out what she missed and, hopefully, move on to the next level of existence (no one knows what that is), she must Delve (purposely capitalized) with other third-timers through flashbacks of their previous lives.

It soon becomes apparent that Elliot has a link with two boys – a Mr. Perfect named Oliver (I picture him like Freddie Prince Junior in Scooby Doo) and the dark and brooding Trevor.

I shouldn’t have to draw you a picture here that the rest of the story goes something like: girl searches for deeper meaning in life while being torn between two boys. Truthfully, that part of the story was pretty interesting. Well, moderately interesting. I enjoyed the dynamic between Elliot and Trevor and there were several pretty intense moments that had me on the edge of my seat wondering what was going to happen between them.

The writing was good and I particularly enjoyed the imagery surrounding the Obmil – how the guests created it with their own thoughts and visions.

If it weren’t for the fact that the main plot of this book was for the main character to reach some higher level of consciousness, it would have been a good book. But, well, it was and it wasn’t. 

Instead of true soul searching, the book relied on Delves that told the characters who they had been in a previous life, but I don’t feel like it really answered any questions about why they were there. 

By the end of the book, I just didn’t feel like Elliot made any significant growth. Her “lesson learned” was more or less handed to her as an afterthought and, in my opinion, it wasn’t something that was so earth shattering that she should’ve been stuck at the Obmil for the third time over. 

This wasn’t a bad book, but I just felt like it could’ve been done so much better.