During a battle with supervillains, a horrific accident leaves the Warner family with no option but to believe their youngest daughter, Jessica, is dead. It doesn’t occur to them that the bad guys could, or would, save her.
Jessica wakes up with no memory of who she is or how she came to be on a space station with two bionic legs, a bionic arm and a bionic eye. She is told her family abandoned her and is sent back to Earth with a mission – to kill them. While Jessica wants to kill her family, along with the twin boys who once rejected her, she knows what the Alliance of Supervillains are asking her to do is a suicide mission. She decides to get her revenge in her own way.
As Jessica puts the first part of her revenge plan in motion, she finds herself with an agonising decision to make. Before she can decide, the Alliance come for her, determined to make her do their bidding. This time, it’s the Alliance who leave her, crippled and at the mercy of the Warner family, who have no idea who the Alliance’s Black Rose really is.
Jessica finds herself having to re-think her decisions in light of what she now learns about her family, the Alliance, the twins, and herself. It would appear the Alliance have left her with an unwanted and permanent reminder of her time with them. Or have they?
Jessica’s older sister, Jill, knows her destiny is to be a doctor and specialise in bionics and genetic variant medicine. She is also hopelessly in love with Christopher, Crown Prince of Galorvia. Can their romance survive the lies Christopher told her when they were both at school, an unplanned pregnancy and Sophie, the wannabe princess who comes between them?
General information
Pages: 258
Published: 28 December 2019
ISBN: 9781678938796
Themes
- Family relationships, especially siblings
- Twins
- Love/Romance
- Revenge
- Abortion/miscarriage
- Snowboarding
- Superheroes
- Celebrity culture
- Loss
- Missing persons
- Returning to the fold
First page
Where am I? Who am I? I have no memory of anything.
I can’t see. Is it dark, or am I blind? Or is something covering my eyes? I can’t move my right arm. I panic. I try my left arm; I can move that. There are bandages over my eyes.
‘She’s awake, Boss.’ I’m startled by the man’s voice. He’s sitting by my bed. Watching me. Who is he? I don’t even know my own name, let alone his.
What happened to me?
I force myself to calm down and try thinking of a name beginning with each letter of the alphabet in turn. I hope one will jump out at me. Abigail. Beatrice. Charlotte. Nothing resonates until I get to J. Jill sort of does but I’m sure it’s not my name. Jessica. That’s it. My name is Jessica Warner. I try to remember more about myself but the name is all my brain will give me, for now.
I try to sit up, but I can’t move my legs. That’s bad.
‘Let me help you.’ The same voice as before. His touch on my arm is warm, and firm. He puts a soft pillow behind me, and helps me sit up. ‘I’m Max,’ he says.
‘I’m Jessie,’ I reply.
Reasons not to read it
- One of the sisters suffers a traumatic experience and is truly messed up.
- She has several more traumatic experiences after that.
- There are unwanted pregnancies, abortions and miscarriages.
- Both sisters suffer from romantic dilemmas. One of them is raped.
- Some of the story takes place on a space station.
- A whole family of superheores? Do me a favour!
Book club questions
- Why do you think Dymo saved Jessica? Why did the Alliance take her in?
- In what ways do various members of the Alliance influence Jessica? Even though she doesn’t remember her family, in what ways do her emerging memories of them influence her?
- How does Jill and Christopher’s relationship change and develop over the course of the novel?
- Compare and contrast the Alliance’s rescue of Jessica with her family saving her when the Alliance abandon her.
- Why do you think the Warners go to so much trouble to help a person they think is their enemy?
- If Jill had decided to keep her baby how might her story have developed?
- Same question in relation to the twins Jessica loses. Had she been able to find out if the father was Art or Heck, what difference might that have made? Would Art really have been okay with it, as he said, if Heck had turned out to be the father?
- What do you make of the relationships between the various siblings in the story? All the Warners, including the brothers? Christopher’s sister Helena? Art and Heck? Gloria and Queen Jade? If you have a sibling, which relationship is closest to the one you have with your brother or sister?
Gallery
Julie Howlin Author 