Delicious soup of wasted dreams.

At only five, Teresa is told to choose: not understanding, she said, Mummy, and it was decided. For the next eleven years, until her lawyer mother died of cancer, she lived in comfort but little, if any, love, never seeing her father and only in contact with her older brother who had adored her. Now, at sixteen, she starts her new life far from everything, in a fairly remote mining area, and shabby house of Ben, the father she does not know. It is the home, too, of her beloved brother but he isn't there for her. He is in the military. Instead, he has warned her against the dark eyed, wild seeming youth, Roman, who lives there, a parolee given house room at the request of an uncle, with a strange, frightening intensity. "Stay away from him."

Beautifully written, almost dream like at times despite the very basic situation and Theresa's coming to terms with her new situation, it has a poetic feel to the writings. And there is a paranormal element which begins to unfurl with the story of a mining accident four years before T.J.'s arrival. Not all is explained, but somehow this feels right: everyone sees in a different way. The narration, too, is slightly strange, befitting the storyline. Michael Ferrajuolo reads with a long laconic drawl, clearly intoned and articulated, but downbeat in timbre, adding to the strange quality of the text. His character voicing differentiations are excellent and, although slow, the pace feels appropriate. It can, however, be speeded to 1.25 playback without any deterious effect to understanding of the reader feels it necessary.

I received a complimentary copy of Roman, freely gifted to me at my request from the rights holder, via FAFY. Thank you so much. Before this book I had been unaware of the author, Nya Rawlins and am now encouraged to try another on the strength of this story. Roman had a strangeness to it unlike most paranormal books that I have read and I liked that. The demons are inside as well as without.

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