THE OTHER SIDE OF DARK

With both biological parents dead and a loner reputation, 15-year-old Katie’s life is complicated enough even before she begins communicating with the dead. Law Walker, meanwhile, walks between his parents’ political passions: His African-American father wants to destroy a slave trader’s historic house (the now-demolished Pinebank, in Boston), while his Caucasian mother seeks to preserve it. When Katie and Law cross paths in front of Pinebank, they begin working together to solve the house’s mysteries. The narrative is unashamedly didactic; what with Law’s conflicted racial identity, the reparations debate and a random-feeling scene in which Katie psychically names deceased African slaves, the author’s hand dominates the tale. Propelled forward by force rather than genuine character development, the plot is bloated and unwieldy. An historical note with information on Pinebank, the family that owned it and its designer would have been enormously helpful to readers in parsing this narrative, especially due to its reimagined ending of the Pinebank facility. Smith’s attempt to use the historic home’s story to explore identify conflicts creates a sadly jumbled mess. (Paranormal. YA)