Echoes--Melinda Metz

Title: "Echoes "
Author: Melinda Metz
Pub date: 2001, 2010 Alloy Entertainment
517 pages.

"Echoes" was originally published in 2001 as the first three books in the Fingerprints series. It looks like the author did some updating in this edition because there are references to the TV show Lost and other pop culture ties that weren't around in 2001.

Rae Voight is a normal high school student with friends and a jock boyfriend. She's relatively happy even though her mom died in a mental hospital when she was very young and she knows her mother really belonged in a prison for doing something horrible. She manages to repress her feelings about her mother and live the perfect high school life, until the day she goes insane. She starts having thoughts that are not her own and has a mental breakdown in the cafeteria at school. She's shipped to a mental hospital for the summer where she meets Yana, a young girl who befriends her, and then returns home to try to pick up the pieces of her life. Her boyfriend and friends are all awkward around her and worst of all the strange thoughts in her head have NOT gone away. She meets a boy, Anthony, in group therapy and together they figure out that she is not crazy.

The book started out a little slow. Rae had clearly never watched or read anything supernatural because she never once thought she was reading minds which was my first guess. Once she and Anthony figure out that she's actually picking up other people's thoughts through her fingertips the story really picks up. She is able to touch things that others--or herself--have touched and read their thoughts at the time they touched it. Rae can sense their emotions as well. It's an incredibly useful gift for someone who is being targeted by a stalker. By the end of the book Rae and Anthony have figured out that someone is watching her and plotting revenge because of her mother's actions.

Once Rae has accepted her gift, the book really moves along and it's hard to put down. It reads like a TV show and it's no surprise that it was optioned as one (though it didn't last long). Metz wrote the Roswell book series that the TV show was based on and has a talent for writing exciting adventurous books for teens with good snappy dialogue. This book will leave you wanting to finish the series and find out what happens to Rae and Anthony and Yana (who I don't trust but that's just a hunch).

I received a free copy of this book from the author. I was not compensated in any way for this review.
******
I'm an Amazon Associate now. If you click on the Amazon links & buy anything I might make a tiny bit of money.