From the dust jacket:  “Cooper Blake has everything going for him–until he wakes from a car accident with his football career in ruins and a mysterious, attractive girl by his side. Cooper doesn’t know how Samantha got there or why he can see her; all he knows is that she’s a ghost, and the shadows that surround her seem intent on destroying her.  No one from Cooper’s old life would understand what he can barely grasp himself…but Delilah, the captain of the cheerleading squad, has secrets of her own, like her ability to see beyond the physical world, and her tangled history with Brent, a loner from a neighboring school who can hear strangers’ most intimate thoughts. Delilah and Brent know that Cooper is in more trouble than he realizes, and that Samantha may not be as innocent as she has led Cooper to believe. But the only way to figure out where Samantha came from will put them all in more danger than they ever dreamed possible.”

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One of my students handed this to me yesterday in hopes of it making the book list at school.  So, the first thing I did was research the book to make sure it wasn’t part of a series, since I can’t stand reading novels out of sequence.  Good news:  While this is a book in the Den of Shadows series, none of the books are interconnected.  Basically, you can read them in any order, and the only link between them is that they all deal with the paranormal within the same world.  On occasion, or so I’ve been told, a character from one novel may show up in another, but that apparently is a rarity.

While the synopsis peaked my interest, the novel itself did not.  Token of Darkness is my first introduction to Atwater-Rhodes’ writing, and I am grieved to note that I have no warm impressions to relate, as I had a very hard time following the story.  Cooper survives a horrible accident—details of which remain ambiguous until the very end—and wakes up in the hospital, only to find an amnesic “ghost,” Samantha, standing at his bedside.  The novel begins in medias res, as Samantha follows Cooper throughout the story while he tries to find a way to help her become human.  My main issue with this novel is the lack character development.  I don’t know—or like, for that matter—Cooper and Samantha any better at the end of the novel than I did in the beginning.  While I read, I did not feel a connection with the characters, or their plights.  Likewise, as new characters enter the story, they remain just as flat and unlikable as the rest, and I just did not care for the novel.  Part of the reason for this, aside for the character development, also stems from the writing style used.  As I already stated, the story picks up in full swing, opening months after Conner’s accident and Samantha’s first appearance.   The reader then has to rely on character dialogue in order to piece together the background story and its importance.  This type of format is very tricky to write well, and it is extremely easy to lose a reader along the way if the story isn’t told just right.  I think that is what happened with Token of Darkness.  The storyline seems to dwell on very trivial events, and brushes over more monumental ones, leaving me full of questions and no answers.

I am allowing my students to read this for the outside reading project this term in hopes of getting their feedback of the novel.  If, however, they feel the same as I do, I will be removing the book from the list.  Perhaps this novel just isn’t for me.  Or, perhaps it’s really as confusing as I think—we shall see.  Two stars.