Reviewed by me for Reader’s Favorite.
Lucia’s Poltergeist by Felicia Kate Solomon dives deep into the journey of Lucia, a girl who craves love, care, happiness, and a better life. Her dreams are constantly crushed by her reality. Her mother is a single mother to three kids: Lucia, Ben, and Tim. Lucia is the youngest of them all. The story goes back and forth from the year 1989, when Lucia was sixteen years old, to 1980, the time when Lucia was seven years old. In these flashbacks, Lucia remembers the time that she spent with her father. Since her parents were divorced, she could not live with both of them and had to be with her mother all the time except for weekends, when Lucia could visit her father. She treasured those times; however, she did not know at the time that there was an expiration date of her relationship with her father.
She hated being with her mother for several reasons: her mother lived in a very miserable manner, she spent very little attention to her upkeep, she was abusive — both physically and emotionally. She said mean things to Lucia and made her feel insignificant. Even after all that, Lucia could not see her mother being bullied by Tim, Ben, or anybody else. She craved her mother’s attention more than anything else. She did not know that strange appearance of water patches would get her mother to acknowledge Lucia’s existence. The more these paranormal activities escalated, both in frequency and intensity, the more Lucia started getting the attention of her mother. Ben believed that Lucia was the cause of these supernatural occurrences; however, nobody believed him.
I, as a reader, am in awe of the amazing writing of the author. The deep impact a mother’s negligence can have on a child’s psyche could not have been written any better than how the author has expressed in Lucia’s Poltergeist. Lucia’s low self-esteem, troubling perspective of the world, inability to express herself normally, depressed state of mind, and deep psychological issues are just some of the attributes that her damaged childhood left her with. The author has done a commendable job in narrating Lucia’s gradual transformation from a terrified and troubled young girl to an independent adult. Those paranormal activities turned out to be the push that Lucia needed to realize and change her life.
The pace of the story slowed down drastically in the last few chapters, and that’s the only part where I lost my interest a tad. Other than that, everything, from dialogues to describing the characters to maintaining the intrigue, is impeccable beyond doubt. I would recommend this book to the readers who enjoy joining a character into a journey of self-realization and really understand complicated characters.
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