When Lightning Strikes

This is the first in another series of books by Jenny Carroll who has also written the extremely good Mediator series.

In this book, Jessica is walking home from school when a storm hits and she is struck by lightning. That results in her having the ability to psychically home in on missing children that she sees on the backs of milk cartons. She begins to phone in names to a special number and, one by one, the children are discovered.

Things quickly go wrong, though, when one child she "rescues" turns out to have been living with his mother who had taken him and was, in effect, hiding him from his abusive father. The kid is returned to his father and his mother is locked up, making Jessica feel very guilty and determined to try and do something to help.

Things get even worse when the U.S. military becomes involved, taking Jessica to a supposedly-abandoned military base to test her powers. It seems that the government wants her to track down terrorists and other bad guys rather than concentrating on finding missing children.

Then Sean, the kid returned to his father, ends up running away, gets caught and ends up with Jessica at the military base, The question becomes, will Jessica and Sean ever escape? What role, if any, will Jessica's sort-of boyfriend play, the young man who sits night after night in detention with Jessica and rides a motorcycle along with a group of other Hell's Angels-type of men.

This is a really good book, not surprising since it is from Jenny Carroll. The lightning strike giving Jessica special psychic powers is an interesting way to start off. It says a lot for her that the first thing Jessica does with her abilities is to help find missing children.

Of course, the old Ferengi proverb "No good deed goes unpunished" quickly comes into play and Jessica ends up in way more trouble than she ever figured she'd be in. The attempted escapes on her part, the helicopter blowing up, the police and military chases, all these just add even more interest and excitement to this novel.

This is the story of a girl whose "heart is in the right place," so to speak, and who wants to help others and will do whatever she can for them. A thoroughly enjoyable book and I'm looking forward to reading the next one in the series.

Back to my main index page

Back to Young Adult index