Shared Skies by Josephine O Brien
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Shared Skies is a YA fantasy novel and the first book in a series. We meet Gaiah Hansfort aged 18 and straight away she is in trouble at school. A loner she has trouble from the “Popular Set” who like to bully her, but her reactions have now led her into big trouble. She’s found that sometimes, just by thinking, she can change a person’s thoughts. But now the police have been called.
Officer Bryant wants to talk to Gaiah’s father, but he’s a recluse artist, who has never got over the death of his wife. Gaiah is left feeling alone most of the time in a big house, desperate to share the loss of her mother and then the departure of her Grandparents with her father.
Gaiah has another problem too, her hair. Every day it grows to waste length, and every day she cuts it off, she feels like a freak of nature. Gaiah’s mother died when she was six years old, they used to live in Scotland with her Grandparents, but, her father moved them to London in an attempt to make a new start.
Officer Bryant reveals the lies that Gaiah has been feeding her Dad about school and from it she finds a way to help. She contacts Gaiah’s Grandparents and arranges for Gaiah to go and live with them and make a new start. Strange circumstances follow Gaiah on her trip north and a chance meeting with a green eyed stranger is just the beginning of a new chapter in Gaiah’s life.
Gaiah will learn that she is a precious child of a melded love between people from parallel universes. Her mystery power of suggestion is called encognating and her people need her to help protect the earth from the Or’ka.
I liked this book and read it in a day, eager to follow Gaiah’s path, I soon realised that the story was not going to end in just this one book, but I was quite hooked by the storyline. It will be interesting to see how the Or’Ka respond to Gaiah’s own melding.
Find a copy here from Amazon.co.uk or Amazon.com
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Rosie Amber 