Review: Keeper of the Lost Cities by Shannon Messenger

Hey all, Dani here.

I am pretty much on vacation now, so I don’t have to go in to work for the next week, which is really great. Damian, unfortunately, still has to work Monday and Tuesday. However, that just means that I have two days of doing a little bit of cleaning and packing, but then a whole lot of reading and blogging.

I’m not going to waste more time blathering on for this intro, so let’s just go ahead and jump into the review.

Summary

A New York Times bestselling series
A USA TODAY bestselling series
A California Young Reader Medal–winning series

In this riveting debut, a telepathic girl must figure out why she is the key to her brand-new world—before the wrong person finds the answer first.

Twelve-year-old Sophie has never quite fit into her life. She’s skipped multiple grades and doesn’t really connect with the older kids at school, but she’s not comfortable with her family, either. The reason? Sophie’s a Telepath, someone who can read minds. No one knows her secret—at least, that’s what she thinks…

But the day Sophie meets Fitz, a mysterious (and adorable) boy, she learns she’s not alone. He’s a Telepath too, and it turns out the reason she has never felt at home is that, well…she isn’t. Fitz opens Sophie’s eyes to a shocking truth, and she is forced to leave behind her family for a new life in a place that is vastly different from what she has ever known.

But Sophie still has secrets, and they’re buried deep in her memory for good reason: The answers are dangerous and in high-demand. What is her true identity, and why was she hidden among humans? The truth could mean life or death—and time is running out.

My Thoughts

Rating: 3 stars

I had been listening to Regan from PeruseProject on BookTube rave about this series since she started reading them in December 2018. Most of the time Regan and I have similar reading interests, so I finally caved and picked up the first book. And I guess my rating on this isn’t too far off from what she gave the first one (3.75), but I just didn’t think this book was anything too special…yet. I’m still interested enough to casually continue the series.

Sophie is just way too much of the super special awesome unicorn, this prodigious talent who far surpasses the skills of not just those of her own age but also those much much older than her. When she thought she was a human, okay, this sort of made sense, because of the telepathy. Oh, okay, and the photographic memory. But then she gets whisked away to a special school for elves, and they have to get her a special teacher for her telepathy skills. This teacher explains that her power is greater than anyone he has ever known, and it’s just astonishing that she can do some telepathic tricks that nobody else has ever managed to do, and wow, it’s all pretty much natural to her.

This aspect of the story ended up bothering me so so much. Like I get that the main character generally has to be someone a bit special–and sometimes that means being the only non-magic user in a world of magic users–but to make this twelve year old elf girl who was raised in the human realm thinking she was human be this super-smart-super-talented-super-powerful-despite-being-untrained, well that just stretches it a bit too much.

However, I will say that I am pretty much always a sucker for a good magic school setup, and this book has that. There is also an interesting cast of characters. Despite my problems with Sophie’s skill and power level, I had a really enjoyable time reading this book. It reads very quickly, especially considering the fact that it is almost 500 pages long.

I think this book does set up some interesting concepts and plots for future books in the series, so at some point I will be continuing. Basically this isn’t a series that I’m going to jump online and buy the rest of the books now so I can just binge-read my way through them, but if I’m doing a casual browse shopping spree and happen to think about it, or if there’s a good sale going on, then I’ll likely pick up the next one. I’ve heard a lot of reviews that say the books just get better and better, so I’m looking forward to seeing if that holds true for me as well.

Where to Buy

You can pick up your own copy from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Books-a-million, Book Depository, or your local independent bookstore.