Transparent

May 6, 2013
Superpowers are a dime a dozen in the alternate Earth of Whipple’s debut novel: a Cold War antiradiation drug caused rampant mutations among its users and their progeny, and vast criminal syndicates gained dominance in the following years. Still, some powers are rarer than others: 16-year-old Fiona O’Connell is the first and only person who’s truly invisible. It’s a talent that her father, one of the syndicate leaders, is eager to exploit, and his ability to manipulate women with his pheromone-based powers helps him get his way. When he orders Fiona to kill for him, she and her telekinetically talented mother escape and try to stay undercover in an Arizona desert town. Whipple’s story starts strong but flags as Fiona slowly makes friends and becomes romantically entangled with a pair of superpowered brothers. The pace rapidly accelerates in the final chapters, but too much time is spent with Fiona fretting over exposing her new allies to danger. The novel reads more like a setup for things to come than a full-fledged story in its own right. Ages 13–up. Agent: Anna Webman, Curtis Brown.

April 15, 2013
An invisible girl finds it hard to hide in this X-Men-meets-The Godfather debut. Ever since Radiasure was invented as an anti-radiation pill during the Cold War, genetic mutations have become widespread, and 16-year-old Fiona is the world's first invisible individual. She has been living in Las Vegas as a spy for her crime-lord father. When he decides to upgrade Fiona's status from spy to assassin, the teen and her telekinetic mother run away to a small town in Arizona. Despite a few improbabilities (most notably, presuming that a world-renowned celebrity would not be turned in to the media), the quick-paced story, set in the present day, ticks along. Attention to worldbuilding gives interesting details of Fiona's lifestyle, such as the way she accessorizes to draw attention to the outlines of her body. Even as she constantly worries about her father and her brother, his henchman, catching up with her, she begins to trust and befriend fellow classmates with equally impressive and secret powers of their own. The slow buildup of romance with blue-eyed Seth and the revelation of his special ability heighten the tension and leave Fiona wondering if she'll ever have a chance at a normal life. A great fit for fans of unusual love interests, happily free of all the brooding of Twilight. (Science fiction/romance. 13 & up)

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December 1, 2013

Gr 7 Up-In a not-far-off future where an antiradiation drug has caused portions of the population to be born with special talents, Fiona's defining feature is her invisibility. Her father, the head of a crime syndicate, often employs her as an uncatchable spy. But when one of his assignments goes too far, Fiona and her mother flee to a small town in Arizona, where they attempt to live normal lives and Fiona attends high school for the first time. There, with the desert as a backdrop, she befriends three other teens with unusual abilities, including fellow outcast Bea and attractive brothers Brady and Seth, who turn out to be harboring secrets of their own. In the meantime, Fiona's older brother, Graham, pursues her and her mother, while her middle brother, Miles, tries to help. When Fiona's father attempts to recapture the runaways, Miles, Fiona, and Fiona's new friends must combine their various talents to fight for her continued freedom. Like many YA books with elements of the supernatural, invisibility and its effects serve as a metaphor for the process of teenage acceptance and self-discovery. A subplot involving Fiona's unspecified math-related learning disability acts as a reminder that such disabilities are neither an indication of low intelligence nor the sole factor defining a teen's identity. Pair this fun, and often funny, offering with Andrea Cremer and David Levithan's Invisibility (2013) or Andrew Clements's Things Not Seen (2002, both Philomel).-Jill Ratzan, I. L. Peretz Community Jewish School, Somerset, NJ

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