"Finding Me" (ISBN 978 0 7582 1676 2) by Darnella Ford is the first book to disappoint me in a long time.

I expected more from such a promising start.

Blaze James and her twin sister live in abject poverty with their abusive, drunken father and resigned mother. A fire devastates the family, leaving their father dead and her twin horribly disfigured.

An interesting premise, don't you think? Not.

I thought what would follow would be focus on the twins' relationship. What would it be like to be the beautiful sister? The maimed one? How did this change the family dynamic?

What I got instead was, as the back cover touts, "a love beyond expectations." (And we aren't talking familial love here.)

Yet, even this relationship dynamic is glossed over - albeit in graphic sexual detail. It was all very movie-of-the-week.

This is not, as the title would suggest, a coming-of-age novel or even a discovering one's true self story - either of which could have been fascinating.

- Tricia Ambrose