Xing

Life has an expiration date, and so do the memories we have of others. I don't try to kid myself and think I'll be remembered in two hundred years. I'll (hopefully) live a long life, might have children, and possibly grandchildren as well. Definitely nieces and nephews. Would they mourn my eventual passing? Perhaps. But eventually, I'll be forgotten. It's a fact of life, and only a few are able to escape this inevitability. It's just a matter of whether we care or not.

But for Jack Dayton, that's his worst fear.

And when his life is tragically cut short, it takes sixty years before he's able to hitch a ride as a ghost with Tag Manning, a man who's on the run from his own bad luck.

Motel. Pool. (MP) is a good, emotional read. It's a book about living, even though it deals with a lot of death. The beginning of the book is a setup for Jack Dayton and takes place in the 1950s. We see the life of a man who wants to be a star shining so bright, that even his death would bring about a supernova that no one will forget. He is young, but full of heart. Jack is definitely one of the reasons I enjoyed MP so much. He's relate-able in a way that most people would understand – he didn't want to be forgotten, but made some bad decisions after multiple setbacks (mistakes that we can attribute to him just being young and eager). We feel sorry for him, but also find his behavior endearing as he travels with Tag in all his excitement.

Unfortunately, I felt like Tag was one of the weaknesses in MP. While Kim Fielding focused a lot on Jack (e.g. the beginning of the novel), Tag felt like he was pushed to the back burner. We don't know too much about him, and when we do, it was more “telling” than “showing” and mostly towards the end. Don't get me wrong, I thought he was an okay character, but he felt flat in a world of 3D. His “good luck/bad luck” thing was a bit confusing, and was brought on pretty quickly towards the end of the book. While I had no issues with Kim Fielding's other paranormal works of fiction, MP felt the most sloppiest.

But even these complaints were overshadowed by the overall storytelling. The author has a clean way of writing – no flowery or poetic prose here. It's a very down-to-earth style that works even for a paranormal story about a ghost. Just the right amount of detail to the world, characters, and dialogue. She also makes wonderful secondary characters, though there was really only one other person that had a significant amount of word count...regardless, it was still quite lovely.

So overall, if you're looking for an emotional story about life, give MP a shot. While Tag was kind of bland, and the paranormal execution could have been better, it managed to still be an enjoyable read.