My Dead Friend Sarah: A Novel by Peter Rosch

Release Date: April 1, 2012
Publisher: Rosch, LLC

Rating: 3 out 5 stars.

Synopsis:
After nearly losing the love of his life, Max decided it was time to give up his life-long addiction to alcohol. A short time after he began his recovery, he found himself at the mercy of prophetic, recurring dreams about a young woman who is abducted and killed. The frequency of the dreams unnerved him but he did little more than go to the police and warn them that something may come to pass regarding the girl in his dreams.

As luck would have it, Max noticed the girl from his dreams on a people-packed NY sidewalk. He began to follow her, sure in his belief that if he could make her know him better that he could tell her the dream and save her. Except life has a way of making this work out the way they've been intended. Does Max have a tight enough grip on recovery to make things right? Will the girl even believe him?

Review:
In truth, I have mixed feelings about this book. I bought the book because I was intrigued about the premise. The way in which the story is laid out took a little getting used to but once the action began, it seemed to flow better. The book is broken into three parts with individual chapters assigned to either Max, the main character, or the woman in his dreams, Sarah. Most of her chapters are found in the second part of the book while Max's are prominent in the other parts.

Max is an alcoholic and doesn't hide the fact from anyone because his road to rehab/AA was a long one. By the time he hit his "rock bottom," nearly everyone around him was aware of the drinking. Since the novel is from Max's point of view, the reader learns what Max has been taught on his path and how it affects the way that he makes his decisions. Similar to the way religion plays a part in many lives around the world, the doctrine of the meetings he attended is reflected in his thoughts and actions. Unfortunately, it becomes painfully clear that his grasp of the doctrine isn't as strong as he'd like it to be.

I honestly didn't mind the many times his alcoholism or the AA meetings/doctrine were mentioned within the story. It's an integral part of who Max is and who he wants to be. Therefore, it's essential to have in order to understand his reasoning and how he attempts to handle the weird, co-dependent relationship that he comes to have with Sarah. They both belief that they are giving or receiving something that is necessary for the other. It's only when it creeps toward that uncrossable line that the end result comes to pass.

There were many twists and turns that kept me guessing what really happened until I reached the two-thirds mark in Part 3 of the book. I really enjoyed the odd way that the characters came together, the way his family and friends reacted to certain news being revealed and the brutal honesty of the last few chapters. It was a pretty good read. The only drawback throughout the whole book was the way in which punctuation was being used in parts 2 and 3 of the book.

Normally, I don't have a problem with the occasional missed comma or weird quotation marks, but the amount of missing commas or misused commas within the last few parts really began to alter the storyline. There were many instances were portions of the dialogue could have been taken in different ways, changing the intended direction of the story because a comma wasn't used at all. Also commas being  used in the place of periods made some of the interaction between characters odd and difficult to see as realistic. I do believe that if these were corrected, there would be a favorable and positive impact on the story.

Overall, I did enjoy the story. It was weird, different and just twisted enough that I kept reading despite the above mentioned problems. If you're looking for something out of the ordinary or an oddly enjoyable page-turner, be sure to put this on your to-be-read list!

My Dead Friend Sarah: A Novel by Peter Rosch is currently available in either paperback or Kindle form and can be purchased at Amazon.com by following the link provided below.
My Dead Friend Sarah: A Novel by Peter Rosch