Keeper of the Lost Cities by Shannon Messenger

Keeper of the Lost Cities by Shannon Messenger
488 pages

    Sophie Foster has always been...different. From a very young age, she could hear the thoughts of those around her. She is a telepath. But Sophie can't control her ability and hearing everyone's voices all the time is annoying enough to drive her mad.
    On a school field trip, Sophie encounters a strange young man who might have the answers to her questions. He tells her that she is an Elf from the Lost Cities. The young man, Fitz, takes her to what he says is her true home and she is brought before the council. Most of the council is in favour of her staying and learning at their school, but one is not. He is very suspicious of the whole situation. And he is afraid of Sophie. Even the best mind-readers could not break into her mind. But Sopie is allowed to stay.
    But Sophie must keep her ability a secret, and that is proving to be harder than she expected. And now, there is a possibility that her mind could hold secrets that could destroy the Lost Cities.Can Sophie find out the secrets and help save her new frinds?

My thoughts:
This was an amazing book! I'm sure my summary does not even begin to show how great it is...in fact it's probably a very bad summary...I can't really remember all the details...(but that just means I'll read it again. YAY!) Okay...so Shannon Messenger is an amazing author. This is her first book, and she did a great job. Sophie's story really drew me in and the settings and characters were really well written. When I found out that Sophie was an "elf," I wasn't sure how I would like the story...I'm used to elves like the ones in Eragon, adn LOTR, and I don't really like the idea of the little Santa's helper kind in fiction. But it turns out that I was completely fine even thought they weren't really the LOTR kind. Also, the author used a lot of legendary/extint animals and places in the elves' world. Normally, this would probably really bother me, too. But in this story, I was completely fine with it...in fact, it made the story more interesting. Shannon Messenger uses the Lost Cities (i.e. Atlantis, Shangri La, etc.) as the places where the elves live. Also, creaturse like T-rexes and banshees are also in the elves' land. But for some reason, I was completely fine with this kind of stuff in this book. I guess that's just because Shannon Messenger is such an amzing writer!

Now, before you go, please tell me what you think of this book in the comments and rate it with the stars/scale thing below (if you have read it, that is).
And sorry abou the different format...with Blogger being weird, I didn't want to fix it in case it decided to be evil again... :P