SYNOPSIS:

When 17-year-old Cathy wakes up one morning to discover a needlepoint near her elbow, her mother is typically suspicious and worried. But Cathy has other ideas and quickly puts them into action. In pursuit of her missing boyfriend (who she feels must be linked to the strange mark on her arm) she starts piecing some startling facts together which lead her into the dangerous underworld of San Francisco’s China Town.

Throughout her findings, Cathy keeps a secret journal and gathers many items of evidence as well as telephone numbers and websites – leaving it all for her friend Emma to find should Cathy go too far and not come back. All this evidence can be found, integrated into the book and also available to download online

REVIEW

by Flora Drury
Published by Bloomsbury Books, Paperback, RRP £6.99, Hardback RRP £12.99

IF you're fed up reading about vampires, it may be time to enter the world of the immortals.

Cathy’s Book - the first in a trilogy - introduces readers to Cathy, a 17-year-old wannabe artist who lives in San Francisco.

Still struggling to come to terms with her father’s death, she decides to investigate her ex-boyfriend Victor - who has dumped her for no apparent reason.

It is fair to say her life is falling apart before she decides to break in to Victor’s home, but things take a decided turn for the worse when she stumbles on a secret which a select group of people have kept hidden for thousands of years.

The reader becomes immersed in Cathy’s world through her journal - complete with added notes and doodles - but can truly get involved by visiting the website www.doubletalk.com, “set up” by Cathy’s best friend Emma to help them solve the mystery.

If you can be bothered that is!

The book, aimed at teenage girls, is clunky and it is hard to care about Cathy’s problems as the characters lack the believability of those of books aimed at a similar age group.

As for the interactive element, it rather feels as if it was tacked on as an afterthought when it turned out simply having immortals instead of vampires was not enough to differentiate it from the clearly superior Twilight saga.