Stephanie Barmann
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When Jasmine drove into the town of her birth, she felt no special connection, nothing that brought back fond memories of her youth. The only thing that sent the memories swirling through her brain was that damn rusty train bridge. The moment it came into view, the tears built in her eyes and began to fall down her cheeks. For over a decade, she’d done the best she could to push away the memories of the last moments of her brother’s life. The bridge was the one thing that brought them all back front and center once again. She wiped away the tears and kept driving toward the destination that had brought her back to North Riverview to begin with.

People always looked at Jasmine funny when she told them she was a ghost hunter. Some thought she was lying. Others assumed that she was nuts. In the seven years she’d been doing it, she had seen enough to know there was more than what one could see with a closed mind. She’d seen everything from colored orbs to very clear apparitions. She’d heard sounds that couldn’t be explained, and helped many people understand what was in their homes. It was helping people understand that had brought her back to her hometown to begin with. She had agreed to study a building that was thought to have a demon haunting, which had been terrifying a young family.

Sighing heavily, she pulled her rearview mirror down to study her reflection. As always, her bright green eyes brought her a pang of sadness. They were so much like Jacks. Then again, many of her features mirrored those her brother had had. Her dark hair spilled down over her shoulders in waves. Her dimples appeared only with a frown. There was so much of him in her own reflection. So many times over the years she wondered what he would have become. Would he have joined her in her strange profession, or would he have gone on to the greatness he had been more than capable of achieving?

 

 

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Sarah is on her way back to San Francisco for the first time in over forty years. On the way her mind begins to retrace the steps of her youth, beginning when she was just seventeen. She is deeply in love with Steven who has been her childhood friend ever since she could remember. Their love is so strong she knows it was meant to be. They truly are soul mates. Sarah is broken hearted when Steven is killed in Vietnam. She loses her lust for life, and begins drowning in her own sorrow. She becomes desperate to escape the memories of him that are all around her, the lake where they made love, the streets they walked down hand in hand. Her sadness causes her to flee, finding a refuge of sorts in her brothers home in San Francisco. There she discovers other parts of herself; but still cannot escape his memory. She sees him in her mind, and speaks to him in her dreams, visions that are so real she is unsure whether they are visions at all, or if they are in fact reality. In San Francisco she meets Paul, a man who is the complete opposite of Steven. Paul is a free spirit who shows her love is possible again, however, complications arise when his brother Adam moves to California. He is the mirror image of what Sarah had lost. Everything about him takes her back to simpler times when they were still just kids, and not yet scarred by the weight of the world. She fights her feelings; not knowing if it is Adam she is attracted too, or the memory of Steven she sees in him. She bounces between the two before finally figuring out who it is that loves her the way Steven would have, the one who her heart truly belongs to. In the end Sara does finally find the ultimate love and happiness that Steven helped lead her to. She discovers that soul mates can never be separated forever; because their hearts and souls are bonded together for eternity.

41/2 out of 5 pixies

I thought Paul a weak, unhealthy relationship, until Ms. Barmann redeems him in a spectacular manner. Adam surprised me, and I think will surprise most readers, with the way his character develops. Once I got into this book, I couldn’t stop reading. I carried it everywhere with me, and read every moment I could.

- Dark Angel Reviews

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