Title: Keeper of the Lost Cities
Author: Shannon Messenger
Series: Keeper of the Lost Cities
Publish Date: October 2, 2012
Publisher: Aladdin
Format: Print, Hardcover
Goodreads Summary:
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.
Review: Before I get to my actual review, let me set the stage. Before quarantine, I was leaving my local Barnes and Noble after the YA Book Club had ended. I was talking to one of the members that had become a good friend, and she’d noticed a display for the Keeper of the Lost Cities series. She told me that she’d read them and enjoyed them, and I should give them a try. I’d actually picked up the first six books a few month’s prior, on a whim during a sale online. I promised her that I would get to them soon.
That was March 2020. They’ve sat on my bookshelf unread since then. Until today.
Today I read the entire first book in under six hours.
I’ll be the first to admit that I almost DNF’ed at about 25%. It seemed like the author was trying to hit on every Middle Grade/Young Adult trope that I was over with. I also got way too many Harry Potter vibes. But I pushed on, because I’d made a promise.
I was pleasantly surprised that by the midpoint, I paused, locked my door, put my phone on silent, and blasted through the entire back half of the book. I was hooked on Sophie’s world.
There are a lot of characters in this book. At one point I had to stop and remind myself who three different characters were, because I got confused. But they can (mostly) stand on their own, which helps. The plot, which started very generic, left many clues and cliffhangers as we went into the climax, most of which went unsolved. I’m assuming that we will touch upon them in the next books.
The worldbuilding and “magic” system are pretty good, though there were a few times that I had to roll my eyes, because of course that would be different. But some of it was kinda cool. The abilities are oddly distributed, but again, I’m assuming this is further addressed in sequels.
All in all, what a wonderful way to spend my afternoon and evening. I’ll be reading the second book soon.
Rating: 4/5
Goodreads Goal 13/52
(Quick note: I didn’t write a review for the 6th, 8th and 10th “books” I read this year, as they are the first three The Old Guard: Tales Through Time issues, which are 32 pages each. I decided I’ll just review the series as a whole when the final issue is released in September.)