Blind

By: Rachel DeWoskin

Narrated by: Annalie Gernert

When Emma Sasha Silver loses her eyesight in a nightmare accident, she must relearn everything from walking across the street to recognizing her own sisters to imagining colors. One of seven children, Emma used to be the invisible kid, but now it seems everyone is watching her. And just as she’s about to start high school and try to recover her friendships and former life, one of her classmates is found dead in an apparent suicide. Fifteen and blind, Emma has to untangle what happened and why—in order to see for herself what makes life worth living.

Unflinching in its portrayal of Emma’s darkest days, yet full of hope and humor, Rachel DeWoskin’s brilliant Blind is one of those rare books that utterly absorbs the reader into the life and experience of another.

Critic reviews

Praise for Blind:

"A profound YA debut" —Publishers Weekly, starred review

"With traces of John Green’s Looking for Alaska. . . a vivid, sensory tour of the shifting landscapes of blindness and teen relationships" —Kirkus, starred review

"A gracefully written, memorable, and enlightening novel." —Booklist

"A well-researched and much-needed story. Emma is a capable heroine who manages her disability with realism and grace." —School Library Journal

"The vivid text and the colorful descriptions allow the reader to imagine how and what a blind person sees. . . DeWoskin tells her tale with humor, hope, and powerful reality." —LMC

"Blind. . . allow[s] readers to inhabit another person’s soul so fully that they will be unable to separate the heroine’s pain from their own and become a little less blind to human suffering. . . for sheer emotional profundity and the elusive feeling of living another person's experience through fiction, DeWoskin is hard to beat." —SF Weekly

"Heart-wrenching" —TeenReads.com

“Blind is soon to be on the tips of everyone’s tongues.” —Bustle.com, August 2014's Best YA Books

More praise for Rachel DeWoskin:

“Wonderfully engaging . . . captures the way adolescence renders one’s own identity somehow unknowable” —The Boston Globe on Big Girl Small

“Amusing, hypnotic . . . Like a contemporary version of The Wizard of Oz or its coming-of-age antecedent, Alice in Wonderland, Judy’s experiences of adolescence are exhilarating, terrifying, and almost uniformly surreal. —Time Out (New York) on Big Girl Small

“Cultures don’t so much collide as coalesce in DeWoskin’s sparkling debut novel . . . Infusing her multicultural narrative with vibrant observations that glitter with laser-intense acuity, DeWoskin demonstrates a smart, sophisticated literary agility.” —Booklist, starred review, on Repeat After Me

“A tender story of manic love and loss, this is a heartbreaking and uplifting novel with memorably off-kilter leads.” —Publishers Weekly on Repeat After Me

“An intelligent and complex portrait . . . DeWoskin deserves special praise.” —The Wall Street Journal on Foreign Babes in Beijing

Potential, but...

What did you like best about Blind? What did you like least?

I think the story had potential, though perhaps it might have been more effective if Emma had been born blind, rather than (like most fiction involving blind characters) an accident caused her blindness.

I liked some of the humour, as well as the descriptions of some of the adjustments that Emma had to go through. I didn't like Emma's pity parties (I would never drive a car, have a job, get married, lose my virginity...") While there are moments of this in every blind person's life, I found that she used this as an excuse. And taking Spark to school? Her behavior in this regard both shows her immaturity and could cause damage to ACTUAL blind high school students who have guide dogs...

What about Annalie Gernert’s performance did you like?

I loved her as a narrator. I am just sorry that she cut her teeth on this book.

Was Blind worth the listening time?

No. As a blind person myself, I have mixed emotions about blind people portrayed in literature and movies. I don't expect all authors to get it completely right, but I do expect someone who spent time around blind people not to get it THIS wrong...

Teen issues are the HEART of this book!

The reader's voice was pleasant, youthful & would appeal to young adult readers. As the mother of a daughter who lost her vision at 15, the storyline mirrored her experience & many of the thoughts were similar to hers as she regained her confidence as a newly physically challenged teen. Touching on teen issues of suicide, drug use, relationships, and family, this book should be recommended reading for teenagers.

eh

Writing was just ok. The author uses "whatever" way too often. Lazy writing. Otherwise, it's a typical teen book.