Lily McCain, Liverpuglian music journo (references in the novel include: Muse, made-up bands actually comprised of actual vampires, and Mazzy Star. Remember them?) has a magic gift/curse. When she touches someone, or they touch her, she sees their future. Yes, that's nicked from Stephen King's peerless The Dead Zone. But where King sees in his premise an opportunity to talk about isolation, loneliness and the disconnection inherent in modern life, Johnson steers the same premise in a very different direction: towards rather a gooey love story in a world that turns out to be a kind of Charlaine Harris Merseyside. I know which of the two treatments of this premise I prefer. It doesn't help that Johnson writes her debut novel in a kind of foresquare tell-it-how-it-is feisty-cum-sassy idiom, stitched out of cliché and a rather forced jollity. It also doesn't help that her own ingenuousness so often betrays her into Thoggisms ('... sipping bitter black coffee so hot my lips recoiled in protest' [16]; 'He stood tall, in fact even taller than he usually was' [31]; 'he laughed, and before I could stop him, stroked my face with the speed of light' [54]; 'Gabriel's eyes [were] sparking a bruised shade of purple. ... I felt a thud of disappointment hammer through me' [128]; 'my throat was so parched I couldn't even have swallowed my own non-existent spit' [217]; 'it was just a pillow now, and I carved out a moment to feel sad about that' [218]). There's a good deal of blushing by our streetwise but virginal narrator, especially in the first half, and a heavy dose of The Celtic, myth-and-magic-wise. Time travel of course takes us back to the Beatles playing The Cavern in late '62. Where else? A bit frantic, especially in its battle-of-gods-and-mortals conclusion. You might very well enjoy it.
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