#BookReview :: Reverb by J. Cafesin

James Micheal Whren is brilliant, beautiful, rich, and taken—with his genius for creating music. He's desired by many, yet commits to no one but his muse. Just twenty-eight, and at the pinnacle of his career, on the eve of his brother's funeral his father shatters his life, and James is left abandoned in hell with no one real to save him. 

His odyssey to freedom takes him beyond the looking glass, to the reflection of friends and lovers. Humbled and alone, James escapes to the Greek island of Corfu. But instead of finding solace there, loneliness almost consumes him. 

Until Elisabeth, and her son, Cameron. 

Reverb is a love story, a psychological thriller paced with romantic suspense. In the spirit of The Magus (John Fowles, 1966), and way beyond Fifty Shades of Gray (E.L. James, 2011), the story chronicles intricately woven characters that linger long after the read, and fraught with frailties that possess us all. It is a tale of redemption—the evolution of a modern man from solipsist to integrated awareness, and the journey that inadvertently awakens his capacity to love. 

James, the leading man of the story, is an artist with a tortured soul and past that weighs heavily on him. He escapes through his music and is almost isolated from the rest of the world until Elisabeth and her son walks into his life. Elisabeth has past of her own with her previous marriage and the loss of her first husband. The book covers the journey of these to souls to finding each other.

I am keeping the story outline short because I do not want to give away much of the plot. It is twisted in some ways and that’s the main attraction of the novel. The situations and the course of action of some of the characters is what give the storyline the quality that it has. Frankly, the book has some seriously disturbing situations and the way the author has delicately handled them must be acknowledged. The dialogues and conversations are a plus point. It is a smooth and well-paced novel, with simplicity in language. Ms.Cafesin’s real talent lies in her character depiction as the way she has portrayed each character in the book made me feel strongly, whether love-hate-irritation, for each of them. There isn’t one character that I could feel indifferent about.

James is a character like no other. It is sufficient to say that James has seen and suffered so much in his life, some of it truly horrifying, that as a reader Elisabeth and her son were as much a hope as for James himself. I assure you that you will feel deeply for him. As for Elisabeth, I appreciated her patience with James but at the same time I often wondered how she could be so blind to his sufferings since women usually have a sixth sense about these things, especially when it involves a loved one. And my god, I hated Edward so much. I kept wondering what kind of a father has the line of thinking like him. He is such a misguided dumb-fool.

Overall, this is a well-written and entertaining read for matured readers.

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