Review: White Space(Dark Passages #1) by Ilsa J. Bick

White  Space by Ilsa J. Bick

Publication Date: February 11th, 2014
Publisher: EgmontUSA
Pages: 560
Series: Dark Passage
Source: Netgalley/Publisher
Rating: 2/5
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Seventeen-year-old Emma Lindsay has problems: a head full of metal, no parents, a crazy artist for a guardian whom a stroke has turned into a vegetable, and all those times when she blinks away, dropping into other lives so ghostly and surreal it's as if the story of her life bleeds into theirs. But one thing Emma has never doubted is that she's real.

Then she writes "White Space," a story about these kids stranded in a spooky house during a blizzard.

Unfortunately, "White Space" turns out to be a dead ringer for part of an unfinished novel by a long-dead writer. The manuscript, which she's never seen, is a loopy Matrix meets Inkheart story in which characters fall out of different books and jump off the page. Thing is, when Emma blinks, she might be doing the same and, before long, she's dropped into the very story she thought she'd written. Trapped in a weird, snow-choked valley, Emma meets other kids with dark secrets and strange abilities: Eric, Casey, Bode, Rima, and a very special little girl, Lizzie. What they discover is that they--and Emma--may be nothing more than characters written into being from an alternative universe for a very specific purpose.

Now what they must uncover is why they've been brought to this place--a world between the lines where parallel realities are created and destroyed and nightmares are written--before someone pens their end.

I don't know how to review this book. So this is going to be short.

White Space is beyond confusing. For most of this book I thought Bick's only reason for writing it was to mess with her readers. It's told from multiple POV's. So well reading some of them I thought I had a grasp on what might be going down, but than it would quickly change to someone else's and I'd go back to "WTF?".
Reading the summary of White Space it sounds like quite a cool concept. It's blurring the line between reality for the characters. At most points they don't know what or who is real. The problem is the execution is just to confusing to come across as cool. Words for different realities are never really explained until half-way through the book. And it took way to much thinking and re-reading of certain passages to try and get what was going on. I also felt the pacing was a bit off. It was either very fast or very slow.

I think this one is going to be for a certain reader and unfortunately I am not that reader. But for the ones that like something that is super creepy thriller that is also going to keep you wondering what the hell is actually going on than I suggest you give White Space a go. It's honestly a very unique concept when you figure out what that concept is.

Happy reading!

Brittany