Publication date:  February 5, 2019
Genre:  Fiction/Young Adult/Action and Adventure
Pages:  244

ABOUT THE BOOK

Finn Jupiter lives in the idyllic mountain town of Victory, Colorado. She’s a smart, daring, and fiercely independent young woman. She also has a gift for seeing the small things that others can’t. Connecting lines that, for most, don’t exist.

While happy to live out a quiet life, hiking, and climbing in The Rockies, fate has other plans for Finn. 

Victory is about to become ground zero for one of the most shocking disasters in U.S. history. And when her father goes missing, a victim of the catastrophe, Finn is forced to make an extraordinary decision. A decision that will question everything she knows about herself. And about what she is truly capable of.

MY REVIEW

I’m the product of a South African mother and an American father. In the sixth-grade I asked one of my teachers if this makes me “South American”. She frowned at me and said that it didn’t.  Most people just don’t get my particular brand of humor.

Finn is an attractive, sarcastic, senior in high school, but “she is wired differently” and knows no fear.  She climbed a building to save a suicidal teen, bashed a bully in the face with a lunch tray, and flew an old helicopter and climbed a mountain to save her father. 

Finn’s mother is fighting brain cancer and her brother is fighting an affliction called Aboulomania BPS “which means he’s often unable to make a choice between two similar options.”  Her father is a “former U.S. Marine and one-time member of The South African Task Force.”

When a large passenger plane crash lands in downtown Victory, Finn’s life changes forever and she and her father find out something about themselves that explains some strange things that have happened to them.

I picked up this book because of the interesting plot. I enjoyed the humorous banter between Finn’s family with my favorite character being Finn’s mother, Emily. I believe she was the hero of the story for fighting brain cancer and keeping everyone calm in a frightening and sad situation.

Despite loving the characters, I think the novelty of Finn’s superhuman feats and just the overall feeling of saving the day wore off a bit for me and even though the storyline was compelling and there were definitely unexpected twists and turns, somehow I felt like I wanted more depth and flaws from the characters. Nobody can get away unscathed that many times and the story was a little too neat and convenient.

If you like coming of age stories with a few supernatural elements, you will like this novel.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Gareth Crocker’s debut novel, Finding Jack, was published in New York to international acclaim. It was translated into several languages and featured in eight volumes of Reader’s Digest Select Editions. It went on to sell more than a million copies in its various formats. On the back of Finding Jack’s success, Penguin Books signed Gareth to a three-book deal. Journey from Darkness was published in 2012 followed by Never Let Go in 2013. Gareth’s latest novel, King, has just been published. Writing is done at night, in a dark room, next to a small window.

Gareth can be found on his website, Facebook and Twitter.