Mirage, a psychological thriller, is told in the first person narrative of Ryan Poitier Sharpe, a seventeen year old girl with an addiction to adrenalin. She spends her summer days parachuting from planes at her father’s skydiving center. Even though she has made over 250 jumps, she can’t seem to win the approval of her stoic Army veteran dad. She looks for greater thrills in the use of LSD and ends up in the hospital, suffering a near death experience.

After her brush with death, Ryan is not the same. She no longer craves the thrills. Her mental health deteriorates, her relationships falter, and her life is a mess.

This would be a better book if there wasn’t so many references to the term “crazy”, if there wasn’t so much culturally inappropriate stereotyping of her bi-racial background, and if her best friend’s sexual orientation wasn’t added into the plot in such an extraneous manner.  I don’t see this novel flying off the shelves. The plot and characters are just too overworked.