Reviewed by Lee Murray
‘Move over Katniss, Olivia Black has arrived…’
Olivia Black is trying hard to focus on her Calculus test and not the cute new guy in class. But Olivia has a rare birth defect, and when her PSS-affected ghost hand reaches into the girl in front on her, pickpocketing her soul, Olivia finds herself in a race for her life. But first, she’ll have to trust the new guy, Marcus, and his band of PSS misfits. If only Marcus didn’t keep lying to her…
Well-known for her award-winning short-fiction, Ghost Hand is the long-awaited first novel from writer, Ripley Patton. A young adult adventure combining tasering action and a dose of romance, Ghost Hand kept me up half the night. Clearly, Patton knows teenagers, drawing on this knowledge to create her cast of characters, both likeable and stroppy. Fiction’s newest paranormal heroine, Olivia Black, is naïve, feisty and intensely loyal but like most teens she comes with baggage, which could explain her mistrust of enigmatic Marcus and his band of merry PSS men.
Ghost Hand is superbly plotted, on-the-edge-of-your-seat writing, and when the bad guys aren’t your regular storm-troopers, but people you trust and respect, then the stakes go up a notch. The novel stands alone – a story in itself – but there’s no doubt its readers will be hanging out for the second book in Patton’s PSS Chronicles. Buy a copy of Ghost Hand for your teens – and watch them disappear!
Ghost Hand is now available as an e-book through Amazon, Kobo, and Barnes and Noble, and will be released in paperback mid-December although it is now available in paperback here: https://www.createspace.com/3904994
Footnote:
Founding President of Speculative Fiction Writers New Zealand, Ripley has had over twenty five short stories published, but Ghost Hand is her first novel. She currently lives in Portland, Oregon with one cat, two teenagers and a man who wants to live on a boat. For more information about Ripley, her website is www.ripleypatton.com