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Gifted: Awakening
She has the power of mind over matter. But if she can’t move heaven and earth, her town could be doomed.
Rebecca Stevens is terrified someone will find out. Forced to practice her growing telekinesis behind her family’s back, the sixteen-year-old mayor’s daughter knows his hard stance against the gifted would drive a rift through the community. But when she and her brother are caught in the crossfire of a late-night C-store robbery, she instinctively unleashes her skills to stop a bullet.
With her ability exposed by the gas station’s security video and the townsfolk up in arms, Rebecca flees with her family to safety. But a superhuman psycho stalker puts her loved ones at risk, and the embattled teenager fears she isn’t strong enough to prevent a horrific tragedy…
Will Rebecca find her strength in time to defend all she holds dear?
Awakening is the action-packed first book in the Gifted superhero urban fantasy series. If you like gutsy characters, spectacular talents, and epic battles, then you’ll adore John R. Sankovich’s riveting tale.
Buy Gifted: Awakening to rise to the challenge today!
Rebecca Stevens is terrified someone will find out. Forced to practice her growing telekinesis behind her family’s back, the sixteen-year-old mayor’s daughter knows his hard stance against the gifted would drive a rift through the community. But when she and her brother are caught in the crossfire of a late-night C-store robbery, she instinctively unleashes her skills to stop a bullet.
With her ability exposed by the gas station’s security video and the townsfolk up in arms, Rebecca flees with her family to safety. But a superhuman psycho stalker puts her loved ones at risk, and the embattled teenager fears she isn’t strong enough to prevent a horrific tragedy…
Will Rebecca find her strength in time to defend all she holds dear?
Awakening is the action-packed first book in the Gifted superhero urban fantasy series. If you like gutsy characters, spectacular talents, and epic battles, then you’ll adore John R. Sankovich’s riveting tale.
Buy Gifted: Awakening to rise to the challenge today!
- GenresFantasy
261 pages, Kindle Edition
First published April 20, 2018
69 people are currently reading
263 people want to read
About the author
John R. Sankovich
14 books11 followersI’ve been writing for over twenty years, and have no plans to stop in the near future. My favorite genre is Young Adult novels, focusing on the growth of the main character as they overcome any and all obstacles.
Even as a young child I was always conjuring up stories and filling them with colorful characters, sharing them with anyone and everyone who would listen. Since then, I’ve progressed quite a bit to formulating longer and more complex stories and sharing them with much larger audiences.
When I’m not writing, I’m an avid Carolina Panther fan, video game player, and a Walking Dead aficionado.
I wouldn’t be able to do this with the support of my family, wife, two daughters, and son.
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Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews
July 27, 2018
Before beginning this review, I feel it's important to state that I received copies of this for free in exchange for an honest review. This statement is doubly important for this review because I am only able to review the copy I received, which may or may not, contain more errors than the release version, so please judge accordingly.
* * * * *
Teenager Rebecca has recently learned she's telekinetic, but has a hard time controlling her powers. But learning to use them is difficult in a world where gifted, like her, are not accepted. On a night out with her brother and his girlfriend, she uses her 'gift' to stop a robbery. From there, her life spirals out of control as she's plunged into an ancient struggle between two factions of gifted.
What I liked about Gifted: Awakening
The protagonist, Rebecca, is an interesting character who is generally well-developed and her relationships with friends and family equally so. She has an excellent relationship with her family members, who are all alive and form a functional family, which is refreshing for YA. While she does seem to be overpowered compared to many of the other gifted, she can't control her abilities. Thus the story generally avoids falling into the trap of the hero winning too easily (although some battles seem to be unnecessarily difficult, while others are unbelievably easy).
The story has a small town feeling to the setting, which makes for an interesting contrast with the global struggle this battle could become. It starts strong with an interesting premise and interesting characters.
Things I didn't like about the book
1. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the story does have what I'll call 'the X-men trope' which is beginning to get worn by now. Essentially, those with powers are feared and hated by those without leading to authoritarian systems of regulation akin to extreme racism. Unfortunately, there isn't much nuance in the presentation of this story, although, with two factions of gifted this could develop in future books.
2. I found characters acting and reacting for reasons that didn't seem clear to me. At some points I was expecting a soft-spoken heart-to-heart only to have one character begin yelling. At other parts, characters gained motivations that we hadn't previously seen. Both Rebecca's father and brother seemed to flip early on without the reader having sufficient motive to understand why.
3. There was also a lot of 'storming', as in the characters stormed up the stairs where it seemed 'raced' might have been more appropriate. But I might just have been on a different wavelength from the author.
4. The above might seem minor at first, but because I wasn't able to follow character motivation or emotion, many plot points just seemed to fall apart into seemingly random events that felt clearly and obviously manipulated by the omniscient hand of the author.
5. The threat level felt very inconsistent to me. Toward the climax as the battle for the town was taking place and the danger was ramping up, with the entire town's police force mobilized and gifted and militia stalking the streets... school was apparently still on and people were out shopping. I felt this inconsistent threat level throughout the various conflicts, as characters didn't always react in ways that made sense to me.
6. It almost appeared that, halfway through, the author realized a YA book with a female protagonist had to have a love triangle, so he attempted to build in one, which only ended up feeling weird and more than a little creepy. One of the love interests developed naturally, while the other seemed forced and the guy almost felt like a stalker, even though she was attracted to him.
7. Probably one of the biggest problems I had with the story, however, was that, after all the use of her power and the training with the mutant leader, Rebecca still didn't have much better control over, or understanding of, her gift at the end than she did at the beginning. Considering that, in the first scene, we see her training, control over her gift should have been one of the main themes of the book.
Technical Issues in my copy
Both the Kindle and PDF versions I was given for review had horrible interior formatting that was hard to ignore. Margins were almost random with some chapters being completely flush left (the PDF version was even worse). This gave a very unprofessional impression of the book. There were also numerous typos throughout, which may have been made even more obvious to me because of the formatting.
However, to be fair, I checked the 'look inside' on Amazon, and that version doesn't seem to suffer from the formatting problem, so I can't make any definitive comments on this.
Overall, given both the technical issues with the book and the structural issues with the story, I couldn't give Gifted: Awakening more than 2/5. I love the superhero genre and this seemed like it would be an interesting take on it, but it ended up falling short.
Am I right? Am I wrong? What did you think of this book? I'd love to hear your thoughts.
* * * * *
Teenager Rebecca has recently learned she's telekinetic, but has a hard time controlling her powers. But learning to use them is difficult in a world where gifted, like her, are not accepted. On a night out with her brother and his girlfriend, she uses her 'gift' to stop a robbery. From there, her life spirals out of control as she's plunged into an ancient struggle between two factions of gifted.
What I liked about Gifted: Awakening
The protagonist, Rebecca, is an interesting character who is generally well-developed and her relationships with friends and family equally so. She has an excellent relationship with her family members, who are all alive and form a functional family, which is refreshing for YA. While she does seem to be overpowered compared to many of the other gifted, she can't control her abilities. Thus the story generally avoids falling into the trap of the hero winning too easily (although some battles seem to be unnecessarily difficult, while others are unbelievably easy).
The story has a small town feeling to the setting, which makes for an interesting contrast with the global struggle this battle could become. It starts strong with an interesting premise and interesting characters.
Things I didn't like about the book
1. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the story does have what I'll call 'the X-men trope' which is beginning to get worn by now. Essentially, those with powers are feared and hated by those without leading to authoritarian systems of regulation akin to extreme racism. Unfortunately, there isn't much nuance in the presentation of this story, although, with two factions of gifted this could develop in future books.
2. I found characters acting and reacting for reasons that didn't seem clear to me. At some points I was expecting a soft-spoken heart-to-heart only to have one character begin yelling. At other parts, characters gained motivations that we hadn't previously seen. Both Rebecca's father and brother seemed to flip early on without the reader having sufficient motive to understand why.
3. There was also a lot of 'storming', as in the characters stormed up the stairs where it seemed 'raced' might have been more appropriate. But I might just have been on a different wavelength from the author.
4. The above might seem minor at first, but because I wasn't able to follow character motivation or emotion, many plot points just seemed to fall apart into seemingly random events that felt clearly and obviously manipulated by the omniscient hand of the author.
5. The threat level felt very inconsistent to me. Toward the climax as the battle for the town was taking place and the danger was ramping up, with the entire town's police force mobilized and gifted and militia stalking the streets... school was apparently still on and people were out shopping. I felt this inconsistent threat level throughout the various conflicts, as characters didn't always react in ways that made sense to me.
6. It almost appeared that, halfway through, the author realized a YA book with a female protagonist had to have a love triangle, so he attempted to build in one, which only ended up feeling weird and more than a little creepy. One of the love interests developed naturally, while the other seemed forced and the guy almost felt like a stalker, even though she was attracted to him.
7. Probably one of the biggest problems I had with the story, however, was that, after all the use of her power and the training with the mutant leader, Rebecca still didn't have much better control over, or understanding of, her gift at the end than she did at the beginning. Considering that, in the first scene, we see her training, control over her gift should have been one of the main themes of the book.
Technical Issues in my copy
Both the Kindle and PDF versions I was given for review had horrible interior formatting that was hard to ignore. Margins were almost random with some chapters being completely flush left (the PDF version was even worse). This gave a very unprofessional impression of the book. There were also numerous typos throughout, which may have been made even more obvious to me because of the formatting.
However, to be fair, I checked the 'look inside' on Amazon, and that version doesn't seem to suffer from the formatting problem, so I can't make any definitive comments on this.
Overall, given both the technical issues with the book and the structural issues with the story, I couldn't give Gifted: Awakening more than 2/5. I love the superhero genre and this seemed like it would be an interesting take on it, but it ended up falling short.
Am I right? Am I wrong? What did you think of this book? I'd love to hear your thoughts.
December 11, 2022
This is a brilliant read.
Wonderful well written plot and story line that had me engaged from the start.
Love the well fleshed out characters and found them believable.
Great suspense and found myself second guessing every thought I had continuously.
Can't wait to read what the author brings out next.
Recommend reading.
I read a complimentary advance copy of the book; this is my voluntary and honest review.
Wonderful well written plot and story line that had me engaged from the start.
Love the well fleshed out characters and found them believable.
Great suspense and found myself second guessing every thought I had continuously.
Can't wait to read what the author brings out next.
Recommend reading.
I read a complimentary advance copy of the book; this is my voluntary and honest review.
March 26, 2024
Interesting
Really good story. The focus is on Rebecca and her family....Rebecca finds out she's gifted (has powers) and powerful people want to control her. They kidnap her father to get to her, her brother joins another side in this war. Who will be the victor? Good start to a series, but this book has a bunch of typos and misused tenses that were annoying. Nevertheless, recommended.
Really good story. The focus is on Rebecca and her family....Rebecca finds out she's gifted (has powers) and powerful people want to control her. They kidnap her father to get to her, her brother joins another side in this war. Who will be the victor? Good start to a series, but this book has a bunch of typos and misused tenses that were annoying. Nevertheless, recommended.
Read
March 22, 2024It has promise but
It reads more like a creative writing assignment written at the eleventh hour with no time for proofreading. Parts of the story could have been fleshed out. Maybe a little less fight-or-flight all the time. The potential for a great read is there, but as is, it's quite painful to read.
It reads more like a creative writing assignment written at the eleventh hour with no time for proofreading. Parts of the story could have been fleshed out. Maybe a little less fight-or-flight all the time. The potential for a great read is there, but as is, it's quite painful to read.
June 1, 2024
I read this book with my finger hovering on the delete button. I was haunted by visions of my 7th grade English teacher and her red pencil. I believe I could write my own book just using examples of missing words, extra words, misplaced punctuation, wrong tense...the list goes on and on and on... The potential for a decent novel is there but overall, it fails in so many ways.
April 24, 2018
Truly amazing book. I have bought extra copies for people and have recommended it to even more. John R. Sankovich writing is clear and to the point. This book is so awesome, everyone should read it.
April 27, 2018
Great book. Kept me wanting to find more time to read!!! I read a lot of books, and this was the best that I have read lately. I would like to read more by this author.
September 17, 2018
I found it okayish. While reading it gave me all X-men types of vibes seemingly which might be the inspiration. My version had lots of typos and errors. Dialogues also felt confusing at times.
July 4, 2024
The story concept was decent. It was hard to follow and too many grammatical errors.
Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews