Welcome back, Katie McCabe! – Posted on Amazon.com
by Linda Welch, author of the Whisperings series, Along Came a Demon and The Demon Hunters, and the Novels of the Systems
Readers of all ages fell in love with fourteen-year-old Katie McCabe when they discovered MISFIT MCCABE, the first book in LK Gardner-Griffie’s young adult series. Now they can follow Katie’s adventures in book two, NOWHERE FEELS LIKE HOME.
In MISFIT MCCABE, when Katie’s father became seriously ill she went to live with her Uncle Charley, cousins Matt, Mark and Sarah. Almost before she could take the next breath, she lost her father, her home and her friends. Life for Katie would never be the same. Then Katie got into the worse trouble of her life when her new arch-enemy, bully Harvey Denton Jr., along with his cohort Emma, abducted Katie. Harvey then took Katie into the hills, where he left her bound and gagged, but not before pushing her into a river. Katie almost drowned. Trying to find her way home, she slipped and broke her ankle and then was bitten by a rattlesnake. Katie struggled back to civilization. NOWHERE FEELS LIKE HOME picks up the story where MISFIT MCCABE left off.
After an extract from Katie’s diary, which serves to reacquaint readers with the events in MISFIT MCCABE, chapter one begins poignantly with Katie in a delirious sleep, reliving almost drowning in the river. She hears the voices of her father and mother, only to wake and remember they are dead. From this first page to the last, readers are pulled back into Katie’s world and all who inhabit it.
Katie learns that her war with Harvey Jr. is only the tip of the iceberg in an ongoing feud with the Dentons, and escalates an already tense situation. She is besieged by unexpected, unwelcome, confusing emotions which appear out of nowhere in the form of sudden fits of raging anger or overwhelming sorrow. Cousin Sarah explains that this is a reaction to the trauma Katie experienced, and teaches Katie ways to cope. Underneath it all, Katie faces the same confusion known to fourteen-year-old girls the world over as they mature; she has the same questions. Sarah and Katie discuss topics important to a growing teen in a way I wish my mother had talked to me.
In fact, Cousin Sarah is a major player in NOWHERE FEELS LIKE HOME: a confidante, elder sister, substitute-mother and friend. At the same time, she doesn’t give in to feisty Katie’s tantrums an inch.
To ease Katie’s boredom, Sarah shares moments of her childhood and early teens. Katie is surprised and delighted to know Sarah was very close to her father Sam and mother Marie, and learns of events her father never mentioned. Through Sarah, we get to know the McCabe brothers, Sam, Charley and, to a lesser degree, Sarah’s father John. Katie realizes that young Sarah was not so different; she, like Katie, had her moments of rebellion.
To further complicate Katie’s life, she now has a boyfriend. Of course, that would not in Katie’s opinion be a complication, if she and Tom were not under Sarah’s eagle eyes all the time. When her best friend Timmy turns up at the McCabe farm, she realizes that their relationship will never be the same, either.
I waited for toad-like Harvey Jr. to reappear, and LK Gardner-Griffie does not disappoint. When Harvey re-enters Katie’s life, he does so with a vengeance.
In NOWHERE FEELS LIKE HOME, Katie gains maturity and (reluctantly) learns the art of compromise. Although at the beginning of Katie’s story she feels that “nowhere feels like home,” she learns that Uncle Charley, Sarah, Matt and Mark have her best interests at heart. She is family, and they teach and protect her the best way they are able.
After reading a preview of the next book, I can’t wait for the author to publish the third in the MISFIT McCABE series!
