"The Girl who could Move Sh*t with her Mind" by Jackson Ford

I wanted to read this book for precisely one reason: the title. I was given an advanced copy to review, so thanks to the publisher for that.

The title sums up the tone of the book rather well. Teagan Frost is living in LA, dreaming about opening her own restaurant someday, enjoying the local scene in between running black ops for the government because, oh yeah, she’s telekinetic, and she’s kinda trapped into this gig because it’s only as long as she’s useful that she’s protected by her superiors from the Area 51 types who want to go rummaging around inside her brain to find out why she can do what she does.

Things start to go badly when she becomes the prime suspect in the death of a man who could only have been killed by someone with telekinetic powers. It wasn’t Teagan who did it, but since she’s the only telekinetic in existence that vaults her to the top of the suspect list.

This is a great popcorn read. It is a lot of fun spending time with Teagan inside her head (the book is written first person). It’s a nice gripping page-turner, and I tore through it pretty quickly. Ford also does a particularly nice job capturing the essence of Los Angeles (to the best of my knowledge, never having been there. I’d be very curious to hear the opinions of some LA residents after the book is released). A particularly nice touch was the wildfire raging very close to LA itself. The smoke is omnipresent - sometimes faint and sometimes strong, depending on which part of LA they’re in at any given part of the book, but always there. Teagan has serious fears of fire, and is particularly aware of it. It isn’t anything to do with the story, just a wildfire, but it provides an excellent bit of extra atmosphere (no pun intended).

Not a perfect book. Teagan is the only character who feels fully three-dimensional to me; everyone else was at least a little flat, and a lot of them slotted into very familiar archtypes very neatly. Some of the twists caught me by surprise, but the ones most central to the story I saw coming a mile away. Some things that I think were supposed to be (as far as Jackson Ford was concerned) thoroughly explained simply weren’t. These flaws are enough to drop it down to a four-star book.

Still tons of fun though. A solid choice if you’re looking for a fun book to read on the beach this summer.