CHARCATERS: 3.5/5
WRITING STYLE: 3/5
CLIMAX: 3/5
ENTERTAINMENT QUOTIENT: 4/5
She is young, she is energetic and she is an author..!! Barely out of high school, Suzanne Sangi has achieved what most of us can only dream about. This young talented girl has authored the paranormal fiction book– Facebook Phantom.
Now, Facebook Phantom as we have rightly heard is a paranormal horror novel with a central theme focus on Facebook.
Sonali (Li) is done with her high school board examinations and now is looking for ways to spend her long-awaited vacations.
Her close friends Joanne and Neel are the ones she most tags along with. But while the three of them love spending time with each other, they all have their preoccupations; Joanne has her forcefully enrolled Guitar classes, while Neel is busy with her mom’s fashion outlet and the parties.
So, Suzanne figures out the best way to squander her time -Facebook.
And it is on Facebook that she meets him – Omi Daan.
He seems like the perfect guy to her, beautiful deep eyes, sensuously curly hair and the perfect face and smile. She instantly connects with him and before she knows it she has fallen in love.
For Li, life is as perfect as it can ever be, but before she can cherish the new-found happiness, she realizes that it is not some love story but a horror movie she is trapped in.
Omi Daan is not the chivalrous human he first seemed but a vengeful ghost bent on destroying & ruining anything and anyone who comes in between him and Li.
How she will survive the situation? Will her friends rescue her? And how will she get rid of Omi? For all these questions the book gives you gripping answers.
The storyline of Facebook Phantom is very fresh and unheard of (at least by me).
The book is written in a gripping way and in a much more mature way than can be expected of the seventeen-year-old author.
The book can be placed in the light reads category because of its simple style and easy language. The book starts on a mundane tone but picks up in the third chapter, after that it is almost un-put-down-able.
Suzanne has lived up to the challenge which writing a paranormal fiction presents. The mysterious elements are placed quite well and the way the paranormal is associated with “Facebook” is also commendable.
A reader knows when horror is a good horror and when it is a bad one because the good ones make you glued to the book and the bad ones make you question the sense of it all.
Also, the bad ones sometimes make you laugh (when they appear really bad and fail to induce fear). There was not a single moment when I tried to make sense of what was happening, for it was creepy to the core.
Overall, Facebook Phantom is good and deserves an applaud, but there are still some things which could have been better.
To begin with, I believe the climax could have been a bit scarier and difficult to achieve. The chapters are narrated by mainly Sonali (Li) and Neel from their respective points of view.
It would be great if there were chapters in Omi Daan’s own narration which would have correctly pictured his emotions and intentions.
All in all, Suzanne is definitely a promising writer and I believe her writing will mature over time, thus making her work even more intriguing and exciting to read. I am expecting some serious paranormal action from her in future and wish her all the best in doing so.