Blog Tour: Farsighted by Emlyn Chand

Summary from Goodreads

Alex Kosmitoras's life has never been easy. The only other student who will talk to him is the school bully, his parents are dead broke and insanely overprotective, and... oh yeah, he's blind.

Just when he thinks he'll never have a shot at a normal life, an enticing new girl comes to their small Midwest town all the way from India. Simmi is smart, nice, and actually wants to be friends with Alex. Plus she smells like an Almond Joy bar. Sophomore year might not be so bad after all.

Alex is in store for another new arrival—an unexpected and often embarrassing ability to "see" the future. Try as he may, Alex is unable to ignore his visions, especially when they suggest Simmi is in mortal danger.

With the help of the mysterious psychic next door and friends who come bearing gifts of their own, Alex embarks on his journey to change the future. http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/13453604-farsighted

My Review

It's unusual to read a blind hero (Cyclops does not count. Alright?!)  so this book got me really curious. At first, the story seems to be vague. Just a blind kid surviving his highschool life, it's just like a normal high school life. What I'm amazed is how the author perfectly showed how a high school really should be. The classes and canteen were realistically described. I'm noting this because there are lots of books in highschool, but they portrayed highschool either a party, a kingdom or anything else just to make it dramatic. Here, high school is just high school.

The story requires time to get used to. It's not everyday that you read a story same as this. Though the story falls under the genre of paranormal, some bits of it is normal as it can be. Even Alex, with his disabilities turned out to be such a very normal kid. Other than knowing every detaiils of how things and person looks like, I get to know how they smell and hear through Alex's POV. It's like I've been given a chance to experience how a blind person sees life. But other than that, Alex is so normal. For the other characters, Simmi and Shapri are the total opposite. Shapri is the wild one while Simmi is the gentle one. Though there are some scenes where it shows otherwise. I wanted to explore their characters more but hearing them from Alex's POV makes it really hard. Alex tends to be self-centered thus it gives little room to know the other two characters more. I'm hoping to hear a lot more about them in the next books :)

Then came the psychic part. I find it ironic to hear a blind boy to see vision of the future, which I think added to the mystery. Sometimes, It's quite confusing as the visions are not clearly distinguished from the present. Only when Alex recognized them that I realized they're a vision. Which is a good thing right? It's like I'm experiencing everything as Alex experience it. However, there are some parts that it feels like I'm just hearing the story from a third party (someone who just heard the story and retelling it.) The story just did not feel personal.

I've also noticed some inconsistencies, there are parts where I just can't understand why the story ended up there, and there are parts that it seems the story is too shallow. Like the love triangle between Shapri, Simmi and Alex. I can't fully understand what happened until I was reading that Alex end up with one of the girls without me realizing it. the love story is not fully developed, but that won;t stop me from reading. The mystery of Alex's vision itself makes a reader continue to finally find out how these visions will come together. 

In the end,  a lot of revelations and "aahhh" moment when things clicked together. Although there are still lots of unanswered questions on Alex's vision, Simmi's personality and Shapri's power, since this is the first book of the series, I've expected it.