Second  Sight, the premier literary effort of two bored moms from Washington, chronicles the adventures of Kyle, a gay high school student who lives in a bizarre parallel universe in which his powers of basic reasoning and intuition can only be explained by the aliens around him as psychic powers.

While Second Sight possesses an interesting premise, all potential for exploring sensitive issues is squandered.  There is no discussion of the protagonist’s homosexuality—there is no interesting conflict or struggle within the story as a result of his sexual preference.  His homosexual nature is there to attract readers who want to raise their credibility among progressives.

It is a classic example of slacktivism— readers are supposed to feel as if they have made strides for the gay community because they spent money on something they otherwise wouldn’t have.

Instead of building on heavy themes, the novel focuses on plot—the story of how Kyle and his supportive, environmentally conscious, fashion forward friends attempt to solve a case of missing laptops within their school. It is consistently gripping, in the fashion of an unskilled midwife handling a slippery baby.

While many stories build to a massive climax, this book’s epic conclusion is just as flat as the rest of the trivial events that happen in the span of Kyle’s hesitant acceptance of his psychic powers

Character development is short and sweet, as the authors have imposed a strict three sentence maximum to each interaction between the diverse group of well-dressed teens, and have limited conversation topics to the homecoming dance and recycling water bottles.

Second Sight is a valueless time killer, and would likely see huge success, had it been on a bookshelf labeled “You Will Like These Books No Matter What” and featured two attractive teens on the cover.

While this review may seem overwhelmingly negative, keep in mind that Second Sight was not made to be compared to real books.  It was written to fit in among other young adult teen reads, a category where the bar is very low.  That is a shame, because one would hope that authors writing for teenagers would at least want them to move past a fifth grade reading level, but instead are fixed on taking the easy way out.

People complain that teenagers do not read enough, when the problem is that they read too much—too much trashy lit with text message lingo replacing prose and detailed descriptions of clothing filling in space where critical thinking could be prompted.

Second Sight is just another tragic example of a book that is marketed a certain way in an attempt to get young people to enjoy it.  Instead of teaching a lesson or provoking emotion, it behaves like a teacher of shirt folding struggling to make his course more interesting by including dated references to a television series from his childhood  in his lecture that most of the class will not even be awake to hear.