A Supernatural Cliff-hanger

Borrowing Abby Grace by Kelly Green
(Teen Thriller)

My favorite series are those that have lots of changes:  I hate when I am stuck in one place with one person too long (after all, if I want that, there is my own life to live). My favorite heroines are those that has a little chutzpah in them: pushovers make me want to throttle someone.  My favorite books are thrillers:  ones where I can't wait to turn the page and keep on with my roller-coaster read.

Borrowing Abby Grace ticked all those boxes for me.  The premise is so original and is sure to keep me coming back for more.  Abby, or the main character who may yet be someone else altogether, wakes up in the back of a van, apparently in the middle of a kidnapping, with amnesia. How's that for the first chapter?  And from there, the action just keeps going.

After foiling the kidnappers and returning home, Abby is told that she is a Shadow-a creature that inhabits the body of another person in order to help them in some way.  If she can't figure out what they need and in a timely manner, she might just be trapped forever in this body and never figure out who she is or how to get home, if she can ever remember where home is.  The family she has landed in has huge problems.  How exactly is she supposed to know what to do and when to do it?  What I love is that the author didn't pull any fast ones here.  I loathe books where the ending is a trick, something the reader had no way of knowing but that neatly sums everything up.  This book doesn't do that--we follow right along as the main character bumbles her way through.

I love series, like this, that you can just drop in on. I like the idea of a new story and new characters in every single book and this one is setting me up for one grand adventure after another. These kinds of books give the reader a chance to get to know the characters as they grow and develop.  Abby is one of my favorite types of heroines.  She is charming and funny with just the right amount of spice.  I am pulling for her all along, even though I don't know much about her because she doesn't know too much about herself.

All in all, I loved this first installment.  It holds lots of promise and I can't wait to see where the next book goes.  I have to read it--to answer all my questions and theories about who this person is!  The idea is very unique in a market that tries to hard to be like every other supernatural best-seller.  The real treasure here is not the measure of 'sameness' it has, but the measure of uniqueness.