Book Review #70: Sight Seers by P.S. Singleton

Hello Dear Reader!

I’ve got an indie book review for you this week, and it’s by someone on my street team! I really enjoyed the premise of this book as well as its unique first-person point of view. I believe it’s the first time I’ve ever read a book where an essentially blind main character was narrating the story, so it was a really cool experience. If you’d like to learn more about this book before reading it after reading my review, be sure to check out P.S. at ps.the.writer on Instagram.

Here's the back-cover summary (from Goodreads):

Learning trust can be hard. Especially when everyone you know is lying.

With amnesia and blindness, determination forces Alison Caddel to search for the incident that landed her here. She’s not entirely alone. She has her charming brother and a gift: the ability to see through others’ eyes. As Ally investigates what happened, everyone, especially her brother, is desperate to keep her from the truth. If she wants her past, she’ll have to fight through secret agencies, monsters, cyborg rats, super-powered beings, and whoever keeps leaving those cryptic fortune cookies along her path.

Meanwhile, across the country, Lee Titus is doing her best to fulfill her role as a wealthy man’s adopted daughter. She must act ignorant of the sinful deeds that laid the ground for his mansion. She must act as a well-educated aristocrat. And most importantly, she must act happy. She must smile. All the while, she searches for something her father has kept hidden for years. She merely needs to hold out until then. But Lee’s smile will only hold up for so long.

Time for the review!

I’d like to start by saying that I absolutely love Ally as a character. She’s smart, she’s a quick-learner, she’s determined, and she’s a lot of other positive things! What I love most is that she still has her flaws. She’s a risk-taker who doesn’t always think her plans through, and even when she does, there are still holes she fails to cover. She has trust issues, which is understandable considering her circumstances, and is good at telling lies. Ally is a complex character, and I enjoyed every minute of time I had with her.

I also loved every other character included in this story. Though my time with them were rather short, Singleton does a great job of fleshing them all out within the time they have. The villains were fleshed out well, and the more minor characters were presented with their own unique quirks and patterns that made them easily distinguishable from the others. Some, I found, were just as fleshed out as Ally, which is super impressive considering they don’t get as much time in the spotlight as she does.

The world of this book is fascinating, especially with the concept of Dragons and Remmutants, which I’ll get to a bit later.

The world is a post-apocalyptic version of our world today. In the U.S., specifically, there are only three major zones, or colonies, in the country that are safe enough for humans to live in due to the existence of monsters called Remmutants. These zones are protected with high domes that prevent these monsters from coming in, and there are special forces that exist that help with keeping them out and exterminating them in case they do manage to find a way inside the dome.

Remmutants in this book are horrifying, monstrous versions of already existing animals, and they’re unique to their region of the world. For example, the Remmutants of the U.S. are terrifying versions of bald eagles.

Dragons are people with special powers, and they aren’t really accepted in society. As a result, these Dragons, who normally can’t be told apart from their “normal” human counterparts, hide their powers in order to fit into society and live a normal, peaceful life. These powers are as unique as the people of the world and vary from person to person. For example, there is a character in the book that can read minds, and there is yet another who can tamper with time.

The pacing of Sight Seers was pretty much perfect! In my opinion, there wasn’t any part of the book that dragged. If anything, the ending felt just a tad bit rushed, but that’s also how I personally felt while reading. The characterization of the characters was fantastic, and I loved the plot and the mystery being unfolded by Ally’s research and findings. There were twists I was not expecting, and I really appreciate not being able to predict them. 

There was one interesting I found in the book, and it’s the use of multiple points of view. I personally didn’t mind this. Ally’s story is told through her eyes in the first-person while other characters’ stories were told from the third person. I appreciated that a new chapter started whenever there was a change in point of view, and I believe it prevented the change from being super jarring, and it didn’t hinder my experience with the story at all. This kind of thing is different for everyone, though, so I thought I’d point it out.

So, Sight Seers rating:

5/5 and highly recommend if you like an action-filled mystery in a post-apocalyptic setting.

Thanks for reading!