Freeks by Amanda Hocking

Mara just wants an ordinary life, but she is anything but ordinary. When you’ve spent your life travelling with a carnival it’s hard to be normal. When your mother can communicate with the dead and her boyfriend is psychic, normal is not a word you can use to describe yourself. A life always on the road, and sharing an RV with her Mum instead of a bedroom all of her own, Mara loves nothing better than to admire houses, and help out behind the scenes at the carnival.

However, when they set up for a week-long run in a small town, trouble seems to follow them. Their powers start misbehaving, and something is hunting them down. Will they make it through the week? Or will whatever is lurking in this small town prove to be too much for them?

Set in the 1980’s (mainly I think this was so that the characters had an excuse to not always have a cell phone on them when they were about to walk into trouble) it does tend to try too hard to remind us constantly of this fact. With references to Corey Hart, characters popping out to the local video store to snatch up a copy of Top Gun and Weird Science, and making sure to crank the volume on Tears for Fears, Hocking did put the decade in our face a bit.

However I ended up really enjoying this book. Although I did find it SO HARD to relate to Mara because honestly, growing up working for a carnival sounds fun! Her best friend can create and control fire, she has the greatest friends that she travels with, and she has a pretty amazing amount of freedom for a teenage girl. While the romance element seemed a little rushed, Gabe’s ‘secret’ wasn’t too hard to guess, and I feel that the ending could have been bigger, overall it was an enjoyable story. A great read for lovers of young adult fiction, or even just of fans of supernatural stories.

Posted by Sas

Catalogue link: Freeks