Storm Child

Twilight: Where Darkness Begins #17

by Susan Netter

Cindy is hired to take care of five year old Ian who is described as high strung. His problems are far more serious than this and Cindy is faced with controlling a child with psychic powers.

Genres: Horror, Young Adult, Paranormal

150 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published December 1, 1983

Reviews

[Thomas · Rating 2 out of 5]

I try to give these books a little leeway, since they were (a) written about 40 years ago, (b) for a different target audience, and (c) cashing in on the horror boom of that era. Even still, this is just a poorly written book.

The characterization here is weak. The secondary characters are barely even one-dimensional, and the main characters don't have any real consistency, so we never get a good sense of who they are. The plot meanders, but also has these pockets of repetition that get old after a while. Honestly, it's pretty boring.

I reserve one-star reviews for books that are offensively awful, and Storm Child isn't quite that bad. Still, it's not really a two-star book, either, since I've rated other books in this series two stars, and they're not as bad as this one. 1.5 stars sounds pretty generous, too, now that I think about it.

[Vincent Baltzer · Rating 4 out of 5]

It's difficult for me to rate this book. I am very clearly outside the target audience.
The writing and presentation of the story, the "mini-plots" within the story, are really more for young teenagers.
This is more obvious than for "the warning" (from the same series) which I rated a little earlier.
I'd only like to give it 3 stars, but from memory I preferred this story to the other one, which I did rate higher.
Well, I'll give it 4 for the fact that I'm probably 3 decades too old to read it.
Should be read between 12 and 14, I'd say.