You think you’re having a bad day at work? All Teagan Frost wants to do is kick back and relax with a few beers, peruse her favourite restaurant and take-out menus, indulge her dream of opening her own restaurant one day, to pretend that she’s normal and so is her life. But Teagan has psychokinetic powers, exploited – sorry, “employed” – by a shady government agency, carrying out break-in missions no normal human could. Her current assignment is about to see her and her colleague take a leisurely drop out the window of an 80-odd floor skyscraper, and if that wasn’t bad enough, a body soon turns up at the same building, killed in a way that only someone with powers like Teagan’s could’ve pulled off. But Teagan is the only PK out there. Isn’t she? 24 hours is all she’s got to prove her innocence. If she can’t, it won’t only be her and her team’s lives at stake but the whole of L.A.
Reminiscent of the publication of The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August by Claire North (later revealed to be Carnegie-nominated Catherine Webb), Jackson Ford is a pseudonym for an author of “16 bestselling novels.” But while the author may be a mystery (for now) the book’s mission statement is clear. It hits the ground running from the very beginning – with sh*t hitting the proverbial fan as well as flying through the air – and doesn’t let up for pretty much its entire four-hundred-odd-page run.
The story is told from the point of view of two characters: Teagan, whose chapters are told in first-person, and Jake, a mysterious young man whose search for answers threatens to take him to some very dark places, whose chapters are told in the third person.
Teagan’s voice is immediately engaging, while also being dry and sarcastic—”On second thoughts, throwing myself out the window of a skyscraper may not have been the best idea. Not because I’m going to die or anything. I’ve totally got that under control. It wasn’t smart because I had to bring Annie Cruz with me. And Annie, it turns out, is a screamer.” Plus it’s also full of pop-culture references and it’s been described as a “blue-collar X-Men” and the book is aware of the similarities, with frequent references to both the franchise and the particular character of Jean Grey. And though Teagan is not without her vulnerabilities. Underneath the sarcasm is the knowledge and the sadness that her abilities mean she will never be able to lead a normal life and that it is only the tenuous goodwill of the slightly sinister Tanner—the government agent in charge of their little outfit—that’s keeping her from being locked away forever as a lab-rat, and possibly dissected to find out how her powers work, and presumably how they can be replicated.
Jake’s chapters, simply by dint of the fact they’re written in third person, are slightly more sedate, making them welcome breathers from the relentlessness of Teagan’s as well as furthering the plot. They also act as a pretty good tragic character study, with one particular revelation casting a character –who you may have thought you had the measure of –and their actions in a new light.
Teagan’s team starts out as very much not a cohesive team, rather a group of mismatched individuals who tolerate each other (to varying degrees) because they have to. During the course of the book they come together, so that by the end it feels as though this instalment is a curtain raiser onto the stage where future adventures will be set.
The Girl Who Could Move Sh*t With Her Mind is available from Amazon, Book Depository, and other good book retailers.
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Synopsis | Goodreads
For Teagan Frost, sh*t just got real.
Teagan Frost is having a hard time keeping it together. Sure, she’s got telekinetic powers—a skill that the government is all too happy to make use of, sending her on secret break-in missions that no ordinary human could carry out. But all she really wants to do is kick back, have a beer, and pretend she’s normal for once.
But then a body turns up at the site of her last job—murdered in a way that only someone like Teagan could have pulled off. She’s got 24 hours to clear her name—and it’s not just her life at stake. If she can’t unravel the conspiracy in time, her hometown of Los Angeles will be in the crosshairs of an underground battle that’s on the brink of exploding…
Full of imagination, wit and random sh*t flying through the air, this insane adventure from an irreverent new voice will blow your tiny mind.
