Betwixt: Between Good and Bad

Betwixt, a young adult fantasy novel by Tara Bray Smith follows the summer between Ondine's junior and senior year of high school.  As artist, Ondine sees things that no one else seems to see.  While attempting to repress her belief of these strange visions, others around her are struggling in similar ways.  Nix, a young man addicted to "dust" sees rings of light around people whose death is imminent and Morgan sleepwalks, waking with dirt and blood on her skin.

Then James Motherwell, or "Moth" enters the picture.  He invites the three teenagers to the Ring of Fire where a popular band called the Flame will be playing.  The party, an event to be held in the woods, ends up offering few answers but raising many more questions.  From this point forward, the three teens, scared and confused, try to realize who they are and what their purposes are.

The novel begins slowly, but the slow pace is not a deterrent.  Smith keeps the beginning of the novel afloat with a lyrical writing style and unique similes.  However, as the novel progresses, and the pacing speeds, the proportions spent on each "act" of the novel seem off, and to the point of distraction.

Bray attempts, in this novel, to mix traditional fae lore with what I believe is her own brand of faerie.  There are subtle nods to other fantasy literature, one of which I believe is "dust" and J.M. Barrie's world of Peter Pan.  Unfortunately, this odd mix was never explained very well or fully.  Bray's lack of evident world building makes the plot of the novel difficult to follow.

Her characters are equally undefined and, for a good chunk of the novel I was unsure which characteristics wer associated with which characters.  Ultimately, this made the motivations of the characters difficult to pinpoint, particularly with Morgan and Tim "Bleek" Bleeker.

Bray leaves a lot of unanswered questions at the end of the book and even acknowledges it through the narrator of the novel.  While I appreciated the kind of ending she employed, I felt more answers should have been offered earlier in the novel and that it was impractical to put as much information and plot into one book as she did.