This is a hard book for me to review. There are a lot of things I like about the book, but it desperately needed a lot more editing. There is a good original story in here, but it’s in a mess of a book. The characters have kernels of greatness, but are too often cartoonish.
Bonnie Braverman and Lola LaFever are teenage girls. They don’t know each other, or about each other. When their respective mothers die, they inherit amazing superpowers. Bonnie’s parents are killed in a car accident when she is 6. She is raised in an orphanage, mute by choice. When she ages out of the orphanage, she moves to New York City, with half formed plans to be a super hero. Lola, father unknown, murders her mother at 16 and sets out of her own intending to live an exciting life of crime. Neither girl has quite the experience they are looking for. It becomes clear that the two girls are halves of a whole and are intended to battle. This war has gone on for generations before them. Inevitably, the two do meet and battle.
The narrative is split between them. Each girl tells her story through her own eyes. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t. As I said, I wish the book had had another round of editing – not for grammar and typos but for pruning and focusing the story.
I’ll be interested to see what Kelly Thompson writes next.
Cannonball Read V 