Hush Money by Susan Bischoff

Hush Money (Talent Chronicles, #1) by Susan Bischoff

2010, Approximately 50K words, Kindle edition. Purchased and read on my Kindle.

Since I want to pursue self-publishing, I've been looking into the Indie books available on Kindle. For only 99 cents, I bought this book on about a week ago and finished it today. I read the sample first, of course - I LOVE that feature of Kindle.

This book is about high schoolers who have Talents - various powers such as invisibility, super strength, telekinesis, etc. It's illegal in this world and most Talents are picked up by the NIAC (National Institutes for Ability Control) when they're found out. It's reminiscent of X-men, but with a much different setting and crowd. It actually reminded of my novel The Second Generation, which deals with part-alien, part-humans who are discriminated against.

I really enjoyed this book. It did take me a little while to get into it because the 1st POV was very personal, practically stream-of-consciousness in parts. Once I got used to the writing style, I read through it really quickly. One of the things I liked was the unique female protagonist. She didn't strike me as the usual YA female lead; I liked Joss. Though her transformation at the end was sort of sudden like the author thought, "Well, it's ending, and now she's okay with all these people" I enjoyed reading about her. I'm rooting for her and Dylan, of course.

There were small flaws - like her head-hopping. So many times, I was like, "Wait, who's talking here??" The narrative, like I said above, was kind of disjointed. I thought it was a great read, though, especially for only 99 cents!

I'm excited for the next book. Marco is a mean guy, he's a pretty good villain, but I'd like to know more about why he's such a jerk. I just hope everyone eventually gets out of his grip.

A few things I could learn from this book. . .

Head hopping is bad. Make sure the people know who's talking!

Buy it here!