Keeper of the Lost Cities by Shannon Messenger

Title: Keeper of The Lost Cities

Author: Shannon Messenger

Series: #1 in the Keeper of the Lost Cities series

Genre: YA Fantasy

Publisher: Aladdin (October 2, 2012)

Source: Library Find

Rating: ☕☕☕

Synopsis: Twelve-year-old Sophie Foster has a secret. She’s a Telepath—someone who hears the thoughts of everyone around her. It’s a talent she’s never known how to explain.

Everything changes the day she meets Fitz, a mysterious boy who appears out of nowhere and also reads minds. She discovers there’s a place she does belong, and that staying with her family will place her in grave danger. In the blink of an eye, Sophie is forced to leave behind everything and start a new life in a place that is vastly different from anything she has ever known.

Sophie has new rules to learn and new skills to master, and not everyone is thrilled that she has come “home.”

There are secrets buried deep in Sophie’s memory—secrets about who she really is and why she was hidden among humans—that other people desperately want. Would even kill for.

In this page-turning debut, Shannon Messenger creates a riveting story where one girl must figure out why she is the key to her brand-new world, before the wrong person finds the answer first.

My Thoughts: A book with some fundamental issues but an OK read nonetheless.

The Good, The Bad, and The Whatever: This was a decent enough book but it definitely had it's flaws. One of my biggest complaints was with Sophie, herself. She's darned near perfect. She's the best human ever. A 12 year old senior with a photographic memory getting into a prestigious college next year. A beauty of a girl who makes teenage boys gaga over her..."the slender blond among her chubby brunette family". That was a quote from the book just an FYI. Then she finds out she's really an elf and then she's the best elf that ever lived. No elf has ever done what she could do with virtually no training. The storyline itself isn't terrible but it is pretty inconsistent in the rules Messenger chose to make. There are several laws in place to prevent the abuse of elfin powers. With the 3 most powerful elfin powers being prohibited. With Sophie's telepathic powers she's told from the beginning using her telepathic powers to sneak into someone else's mind without permission is prohibited. She does this anyway, multiple times and somehow isn't thrown in jail. Despite some weaknesses in her world building I actually didn't mind the action of the book and watching Sophie learning how to be herself. Beware of some Harry Potter similarities though. There are some reviewers who swear this is just a HP ripoff but to tell the truth HP wasn't the first to come up with a magical world with children but it has been one of the most popular. If you take this book and read it and not compare it you'll have a better experience with it.

In a Nutshell: An OK book I just enjoyed because I didn't compare it to something else. I'll read the next book and see where that takes me.