Sophie McKenzie - All My Secrets - Book Review (Mr Ripley's Enchanted Books)

We have a brand new title from the bestselling, award-winning author, Sophie McKenzie. This book will intrigue you as a reader and deliver a hatful of surprises, as always. Sophie entertains us with a different tale and writing, but in her trademark style, which is fantastic. However, I don't feel that this is her best book to date. As always though, I never know what to expect from Sophie as she is such a diverse writer encompassing all ages. 

What I do expect is a great story and here is another......
The preface for this book is a 10 million pound inheritance from a woman called Irina Galloway. Evie wants to know who Irina is, and why she has been given this money. However, the discovery soon turns Evie Brown's world on its head. This is the start of a mysterious ride of self discovery when Evie finds out some hard hitting truths from her parents. 

Turning detective, she uncovers the mystery benefactor, a bucket load of unanswered questions and finds herself on the Scottish Island of Lightsea searching for answers. Catapulted into danger - the story brings a crashing wave of tension and suspense which, in my opinion, is what the author does best. 

A thrilling storm is whipped up full of mystery and a dark edge tone, which will have you riding the wave of ghostly appearances and spooky mayhem. This is fantastically clever, well constructed, very engaging and is probably the best part of the book. 

The early part of the setting connected with me in a special way. It really brought back my time staying on Rose Street (Edinburgh) making the plot feel very realistic. I could see and smell the flat, as well as hear the pedestrians slapping up and down the busy street. It brought back a vibe and so many happy memories. The book explores some emotionally charged topics which will make you think and help you to relate to modern teenage life. 

The writing is concise uncovering revelations and some dark secrets that will rock you to the core.  I really loved Evie as she is a normal and realistic teenage girl. Although, I would have perhaps liked to have seen more teenage angst pumped into the character's personality. Nevertheless she is very strong willed and a natural born fighter which I really took to in a big way.  

I had no problem following this story; pure escapism for me. Whilst this story is specifically aimed at teenagers, I feel a younger audience (10 years+) would especially devour and love this book, in my opinion. The book ties together all of the loose knots in a satisfactory and climatic way, which suggests that it is a standalone book with no other book to follow.    

I would definitely recommend The Medusa Project series by Sophie McKenzie; these are some of my all time personal favourite books. 

Published by Simon & Schuster Children's Books (2 July 2015)

RHCBA blog tour: Sophie McKenzie

It's really brilliant to see The Medusa Project; Hit Squad has been shortlisted in the Older Readers category  for the Red House Children's Book Award 2013. I have enjoyed all of the books within this fantastic series so it's great to see it nominated here.  The Red House Children's Book Award is the only national children’s award that is voted entirely by children. It is owned and co-ordinated by the Federation of Children's Book Groups, and sponsored by Red House. For more details click here: http://www.redhousechildrensbookaward.co.uk/

Mr Ripley's Enchanted Books warmly welcomes Sophie McKenzie to the blog. Here is her post.

Sophie McKenzie on The inspiration behind Hit Squad - and The Medusa Project series

When I was planning The Medusa Project series, I had three aims in mind. Firstly, I wanted to write about teenagers in our own, contemporary world developing a variety of abilities, starting with mind-reading, telekinesis, predicting the future and being able to protect yourself from physical harm. I knew that the big challenge would be to make this feel convincing to the reader - to make something extraordinary feel like it had really happened to four quite ordinary teenagers. To that end I was determined that all the main characters should respond differently to their power and that the type of ability each person developed should grown out of their character and personality.

Secondly, I wanted to write a series of books where all four main characters appear in every book, but where a different person narrates each novel in turn.  And thirdly, and most importantly, I wanted to create characters that readers would care about and stories that would make them eager to turn every page.

The Set-Up, the first book in the series, follows Nico’s attempts to control and use his emerging telekinesis – and the attempts made by others to control and use him. By the end of the story Nico and the other three main characters have been brought together (reluctantly) to form crime-fighting force, the Medusa Project, using their psychic powers and run by a government agent. At this point the four are far from friends, though Nico clearly likes Ketty very much.

The next book in the series, The Hostage, is narrated by Ketty herself. Now we finally find out exactly what Ketty thinks of Nico, as she struggles both with her ability to see into the future, horrified at the prospect of her brother getting mixed up with master-criminal Damian Foster. Ed, the mind-reader of the group, actively resents his psychic power. He tells the story of The Rescue, in which the main characters are sent to a boot camp in Spain to learn some discipline. Back in the UK for Hunted, Dylan takes up the tale. This was my favourite book to write of the six in the series, mostly because of the main character herself. Dylan is prickly and rude, yet extremely vulnerable under the surface. 

I enjoyed writing these first four books so much that I couldn’t stop! After I finished Hunted, I decided to write two more novels. In Double Cross the story is told by Nico but in Hit Squad, all four main characters take a turn at the narration. For these two new books I wanted to introduce a couple of fresh psychic abilities so, during the planning stages I asked the young people at my author talks which additional powers they would like to see. I picked the most popular - shape shifting and flying - and gave these to new characters Amy and Cal.

With Hit Squad I knew that I was writing the last of the series – at least for the time being – and was determined to make the story as dramatic as I could. I’d wanted for ages to write about the threat posed by unscrupulous scientists trying to mimic the effects of the Medusa gene in drug form and this plot line gives the main characters lots of risks to take and plenty of danger to overcome.

                                                               

Thanks for reading - feel free to leave any comments. 

Useful links:
http://www.fcbg.org.uk/
http://www.redhousechildrensbookaward.co.uk
/http://www.sophiemckenziebooks.com/