This title would be an interesting purchase since the unique subject of graphomania is described so vividly, and this type of resilient fiction may help someone struggling with the compulsion.' - VOYA-Journal There are sexual relationships and the missing Reverend believes that honoring God is shown to him through sex and torture.

This is a gripping, psychologically intense mystery, but there are times when the story lags. This begins a complicated relationship, just one of many in Callie's life. Lindsey is interested in a boy at school, John, who stares at Callie one day in choir class when she slips a note from Lindsey to him. Since she was released from County, Callie lives with a foster family and she considers their daughter to be her sister. After Callie was found in the apartment, she spent time in 'County' where she met a boy, Elijah, with whom she formed a bond and a sexual relationship. Her mother stabbed her father before he went missing and she is currently in a mental hospital where he had her placed. The trauma has triggered in Callie an obsessive compulsion to write known as graphomania. Her father, Reverend Palmer Prescott, is missing along with a parishioner from his church, twelve-year-old, Hannah Rynes. 'Calliope 'Callie' Knowles was missing for over thirty-six hours before she was found in the apartment over the bar with the words, 'I killed him' written on her body and the walls with a red felt-tip pen. Though readers may wonder why foster parents so uninvolved would take Callie in or how she maintains good grades, these questions fade in the face of the incessant demands that the graphomania makes on both the characters and those turning the pages.' -starred, Booklist-Journal Callie's uncontrollable need to write-and the anxiety she feels when she can't-is communicated as if by osmosis. The book's intensity can be overwhelming. When she finds herself clinging to her 'sister's' boyfriend, John, who's somehow related to the mystery, her world is jolted again. Her new foster family has given her an upgraded life for which she's unprepared. Her mother is in a mental institution after stabbing Palmer, whose persona alternates between man of God and sexual predator. Literally raised in a church, Callie doesn't do normal. But her journals of repetitive poetic ramblings obscure rather than illuminate the case. The police don't believe that Callie killed either her father, Pastor Palmer, or the 12-year-old who disappeared that day.

At the same time, she developed graphomania and became someone who is impelled-to the point of terror, to the point of exhaustion-to write down the words screaming in her head. Almost a year earlier, Callie was found in a deserted room scribbling 'I killed him, ' more than a thousand times on a wall. ' Readers will feel unmoored until the last few pages of Oblivion, and that's all right so does the story's narrator, Callie. Recommended.' - Library Media Connection-Journal All in all, this is an excellent choice for a reader seeking a plot-driven mystery with complex characters. The handling of drugs, alcohol, sex and relationships is realistic and likely to please parents and educators. This gripping mystery excels in the portrayal of teenagers'onflicted inner lives. As the anniversary of the disappearance draws closer, Callie's writing gets worse, and new secrets come to light. Now, she's tormented with the urge to write constantly. Officers found her in a deserted apartment, covered in mud and the words I KILLED HIM. 'Callie can't remember what happened the night when her reverend father and Hannah, a girl from the church, disappeared.

Oblivion blood and mud