I'm too old for this one ( )

Not bad. Spooky. ( )

Summary: Stacey's had prophetic dreams of impending danger - to herself and others - practically all of her life. Her visions have started again, and what she thinks they're telling her is that she needs to go spend some time with Jacob, her ex-boyfriend (or maybe that's just her friends telling her that). Jacob is recovering from a bout of amnesia, and although he also has prophetic dreams, he's struggling to remember Stacey or anything about their life together. Can they find their way back to each other before it's too late?

Review: I didn't know this when I picked it up, but this is apparently a graphic novel continuation/summary of a series of regular novels. That may have worked in my favor, though, since this book does a very nice job of introducing the characters and their relationships, and fleshing out their backstories, so I had no problem getting into the story. The structure of this book threw me a little - about 1/3 of the way in, it switches from Stacey's journal to Jacob's journal at kind of an odd point in Stacey's story. But otherwise, I thought this was really nicely done. The ending felt very "YA Romance"-y, and I am not a big fan of 19-year-olds declaring that they've found their "soulmate" as though their relationship, now that it's gotten through this one tough patch, will never have problems again and they'll stay together forever. The characters maybe were not as thoroughly rounded as I've seen (although neither were they flat), but a lot of their interactions felt believably real (particularly involving Jacob's ex-girlfriend). I also really liked the artwork, it's a nice blend of realistic and cartoon that uses the graphic medium to good effect (I particularly liked the side-bar callouts listing the rules of candle magic or illustrating the instinctual parts of Jacob's brain.) 4 out of 5 stars.

Recommendation: I don't know how this fits in with the novels (although I liked this enough to be willing to read them to find out), so I can't recommend on that front, but this works just fine as a standalone, and should appeal to fans of YA romance with a touch of magic. ( )

The Book "Black is for Beginnings" by Laurie Faria Stolarz is about a high school girl named Stacy and her boyfriend Jacob. Jacob has lost some of his memory from an injury in the last book. Stacy really loves him and she moves to Colorado to be with him.

The problem with that is now Stacy has to explain everything that's happened in his whole life because he doesn't remember much. While doing this Stacy herself relives her own past and sees how much she's accomplished in life and how much she'd helped people.

I thought this book was a little repetitive of the last four and was more of a summary of her life than and adventure Stacy goes through. ( )

This was definitely my least favorite of the series. The back cover says, "It's happening again... Prophetic dreams. Near-brushes with death. Killers pursuing her and her friends. Stacey Brown knows that being a hereditary witch isn't all it's cracked up to be." So naturally, I thought that this book would be like the others, but it wasn't. There was no murder mystery or anything like that. It was just a little epilogue showing Stacey and Jacob's lives. Stacey is back at college while Jacob is at home with his parents, trying to restore his memory. Meanwhile, Stacey feels threatened when she finds out that Jacob's ex-girlfriend is spending so much time with him, so she decides to go visit him. It was a very short read. I finished reading it the day I bought it. I'm sorry to say it was actually a little disappointing. I just expected so much more out of it. I think this book was rather unnecessary and that Red was a better conclusion to the series.

Series order: Blue, White, Silver, Red, Black ( )