On the Children's Shelf: Keeper of the Lost Cities by Shannon Messenger

So I was all set to write about a book I read about a week ago, except sometimes I find a book that jumps the list of books I'm planning to write about, and I have to write about it immediately. Last weekend, my friend's daughter told me about Keeper of the Lost Cities by Shannon Messenger. She raved about this series and told me I had to read it.

 

I love that kind of review and was thrilled when she handed me book one to borrow. I started reading the next day and couldn't put the book down. As much as I wanted to do nothing but read through the whole book, work and life existed. Although my reading time was limited, every free moment I found myself racing back to that book. It was that good. It was one of those rare books that one could easily pick up, start reading, and continue straight through to the last page.

 

The book begins with a child prodigy, Sophie Foster, who is 12 years old and a senior in high school. She has been offered a full scholarship to university and has just been featured in her local newspaper. Near her home, wild fires are burning out of control and believed to be started by an arson. Her life is as normal as a 12-year-old high school senior's life can be until she meets a young man on a school trip who seems to have been looking for her and introduces her to a new world she had no idea existed. Now that she has this knowledge, her whole life is about to change in ways she could never have imagined. 

 

This is one of the most challenging books I've written about simply because the story is so good I don't want to give anything away. Half the fun was the discovery of where this story would go. The lost cities, like Atlantis, exist. They are populated by amazing characters with even more amazing abilities. The world we live in exists too. Messenger combines these worlds in this book in a way that is so believable, the reader is drawn in from page one. I wish I could tell you more, but you need to discover it for yourself. Seriously, just read this book. 

 

Today, my dear friend brought me books two, three, and four (book five is coming out soon). While I can't give more away about book one, I'm going to go start book two immediately. It's really that good. Trust me!