What scares YOU?

Catherine Perez
Alone
By Cyn Balog

Have you ever felt as if someone was watching you?

Seda’s life took a drastic turn when her mom announced they would be leaving Boston. She was forced to leave everything that she had behind, including her friends and school. Seda’s mom inherits an old haunted mansion that she was supposed to put on the market to sell but she had a change of mind and decides to renovate the mansion instead. They were only supposed to stay there a couple of weeks until the mansion was sold but with this change, Seda fears she will never get back to her old life. The life where she communicated with kids her age and did things that normal people did. Seda feels trapped inside the mansion. Seda and her siblings don’t go to school since her mom doesn’t believe they need to and says it’s a waste of time. When a group of teenagers gets stranded at the mountain, where Seda and her family live, they come to the mansion to seek help. Seda refuses to let them stay because of the dangers that lurk within the mansion and those that are hidden in her. Seda has a voice that always disturbs her, she calls this voice Sawyer. Seda believes that Sawyer is her twin brother that she consumed when they were in the womb.

I am not one to read books, but I personally enjoyed the novel. During the novel, there are many parts of the book that makes you want to continue reading until you find out what happens. There is a lot of suspense included in the book. For example, Seda was exploring the mansion since there are a lot of spare rooms and as she was doing this, she saw a shadow. No one was with her at the time, this makes the reader want to know what or who that shadow is. I also like how the author portrays the characters in the book and shows their personalities to the reader through the character’s actions. The author wrote using extremely specific details and descriptive vocabulary which allowed me to form a clear image in my head of what was happening in the story.

I definitely recommend the novel Alone by Cyn Balog. This book is intended for an audience of young adults. I realized this novel had a fairly simple vocabulary which made it easy to comprehend the story and it’s interesting plot line. I would also recommend it to anyone one who is interested in reading mystery books. This book allowed me to focus my attention on the story and complex emotions of the main character instead of forcing me to waste my time trying to digest difficult or wordy language that was irrelevant to the plot.