Keeper of the Lost Cities

Such a fun and engaging book. Definitely has themes of Harry Potter and some Percy Jackson vibes!

I loved loved loved this series . it is so fictional yet realistic.It has elements of love to balance everything out.In conclusion it is amazing ?

Very immersive. Great fantasy. Amazing character development. Could really relate.

In the first book of the Keepers of the Lost Cities series, Sophie is a brilliant 12 year old with the ability to read people’s minds. She doesn’t understand why she feels so different and alienated from other people, even her family, until she discovers she is an elf. She spends the whole book learning to be an elf.I read this book because I needed to help my stepdaughter (who adores this series) to write a book report. I promised her I would read the rest, or I would have abandoned the book and read a synopsis for her report. It has a watery plot that ebbs and flows over the setting’s beach. It was all scene setting for future books, and didn’t get exciting till the last couple chapters.And what’s with the huge holes of unreality in the plot? Really? There has to be a tribunal for her breaking a law that literally no one but the high council knows exists? That’s ridiculous.

Not my kind of book. I read this to support a young person's love of reading and her attempt to start a book club. We started with both adults and young teens...the idea is that the teens will carry on now that we've helped them launch. So, I read a fantasy novel. I'm no expert on the genre. I did enjoy the writing and was amazed at the highly imaginative world that the author created. I especially liked the manifestation of various abilities. There were universal elements to the story that I could identify with; for example, being the "new girl" trying to find her way in a different environment. And the book even brought a tear to my eye at one point. I began this knowing it was the first book in a series. So, unsurprisingly, the book ends with several unanswered questions. However, it brought just enough closure to stand alone as an interesting read.

This is my FAVORITE book series! It is very clean and is a perfect read for girls 9+ The way Shannon writes is magical! 1000/10!!!!!

Team Foster-Keefe!!!!

This is an amazing book series that has brought me so much joy reading! I 100% recommend reading! It is kinda a cross between Harry Potter and The Lord of the Rings.

AMAZING!

Great! Full of suspense. I loved it. I recommend it to young readers. I would say it is about for people 8-20. It is so amazing.

That was one of the best books I've ever read!

This book series is one to match Harry Potter and Percy Jackson ! I’ve read them both and adored them, however I have yet to reread them like I am doing with this series!

This series is very popular in our school library so I decided to give it a try. However, by the halfway point I gave up! Keeper of the Lost Cities never grabbed my attention and I couldn't be bothered reading on. I was fed up with the number of times I, the reader, was told how special Sophie was. Not only was she a superstar at telepathy and had a photographic memory, she was also sickly sweet and the prettiest girl around.I found the plot weak, the world building lacked substance and the dialogue was stilted. Then there was the love triangle! Really? They are bad enough when they are in YA and adult fiction without having to add them to tween novels as well.I am glad the girls enjoy reading this novel and all the others in the series but it definitely wasn't for me.

The story is amazing! The plot is spot on! Character development is perfect! Overall a great book. The one downside to this book is the world descriptions. I would DEFINITELY give this book a five star if the descriptions were better. But still my love for the plot and characters make me continue reading this book. Can't wait for Book 9!!!!!

I enjoyed reading it so much and still waiting for the next book to come out❤️

This now one of my favorite book series, thanks to my friend for introducing this series to me. It is awesome!

This book was Awesome and Fun Adventurous and very very courageous.

#teamfitzfie!

Sophie Foster is a Telepath, and for years she has been trying to hide her gift and block the thoughts of others until one day she meets a boy named Fitz who seems to know about her abilities. He takes her to a strange world where powers like hers are common. Sophie discovers a new life, but it means leaving her family and all that she has known behind, but she really has no choice. Her new family and new school are so much different from her previous life, but it isn't long before she finds that her abilities not only made her special in her old world, but they also make her special in this new world, and those abilities are going to make her new life even more difficult than in the old one.

I enjoyed Keeper of the Lost Cities more than I thought I would and the annotations in the margins of many of the pages in this edition of the book are at least part of the reason. Comparisons could be made to Harry Potter and Twilight, but the details make this story unique. The many characters are clearly developed and defined in the story, making their journeys more interesting. Sophie did, however, seem to be able to forget her previous life pretty easily, but overall, Keeper of the Lost Cities is a very good beginning to what I believe will be a great series.

This is my favorite book series EVER! My friend recommended this book for me and I looked it up and was skeptical about it...But I ended up reading all 7 of the books in a week! After that I counted down the days until the next book came out and wow it took forever but Shannon Messenger did not let me down!!!

What I love about this series is it has a little bit of romance but that’s in the later books...and the few things that are in it are appropriate and did not make me uncomfortable!! I also love that every page you fall more in love with all of the characters! Well I won’t spoil it for y’all but if you are interested in Keeper if the Lost cities please please please read it!!!!!

Theses is my favorite books. I have read them multiple times. All my friends read them and I’m shore you will love them. Appropriate for all ages

So I was having trouble with a shortage of books to read and I had heard my friend saying that this book was amazing so I read this book and it was incredible unbelievable it took me a long time to finish though but I am a dedicated reader and I finished 1-8 in a month but this book the first one has been for sure my favorite thanks Shannon

The book is so interesting that you just want to keep turning the pages to know what comes next. There are lots of highs and lows and it keeps you entertained all throughout!!

Amazing! Love the plot devices used, and the characters are likable and dynamic. Sharon Messenger truly weaved a wonderful tale, and I can't wait to read the second book. I love it!

I really enjoy this book- just read it for the second time. Maybe I'll get around to writing a review. Just wanted to say it did remind me of Harry Potter in the beginning but I like this book way more than Harry Potter, which I thought was meh. Yes, I'm not a fan of Harry Potter but enjoyed this story so much more.

Review courtesy of Dark Faerie Tales.Quick & Dirty: A girl with many gifts learns she’s not only an elf, but an elf raised by humans for the purpose of a rebel group, the Black Swan.Opening Sentence: Blurry, fractured memories swam through Sophie’s mind, but she couldn’t piece them together.The Review: Sophie always knew she was different. I mean, how many 12-year-olds are in high school? It isn’t until a field trip to a local museum that Sophie starts to realize there could be something more to her telepathic abilities. Thrown into a colorful world of special abilities and mythological creatures, Sophie starts a new life as a student in a prestigious elf school. But even with her new friends by her side, odd and mysterious things keep happening. Something bad is about to happen – and Sophie is right in the middle of it. Full of adventure, Keeper of the Lost Cities is a fun and high-stake story about friendship and trust, discovering who your friends and enemies really are and what a little bit of faith can do.For a middle grade book, I would group this with the Percy Jackson series and Artemis Fowl. This book is filled with hilarious and witty characters, a twisty-plot and a gorgeous world of elves and magic. As a high schooler, I still found myself laughing and sympathizing with the characters.Sophie in the human world is a child prodigy. She has a photographic memory and just so happens to be able to read minds (not that she tells anybody this). I feel bad for her as she’s thrown all of a sudden into the elf world without a single glance back to her human family. She’s just there one day and gone the next. Of course this is hard on Sophie because now she lives with adoptive parents that seem a bit distant. Although she’s 12 years old, she’s still relatable. Actually for a 12 year old she’s very strong willed, yet still vulnerable, reminding us that she’s still a kid who totally up and moved from one world to another.And there’s still a bit of romance in this middle grade book. Nothing steamy, just something cute and light-hearted. Despite the misleading synopsis above, this book mainly focuses on Dex, a nerdy and protective boy from Sophie’s school. He obviously has a crush on Sophie, but she has a crush of Fitz, a child prodigy in his own way and also the son of Sophie’s protector (for lack of a better word…maybe lawyer is better?) Nothing happens (They’re 12 for peat’s sake), but it is cute.Overall, this is a pretty entertaining book with a slow beginning (just until she finally gets to the elf world). There’s plenty of twists, and the way the school works sort of reminds me of Harry Potter. Beware: although not a major cliffhanger, the plot line is still left hanging. Notable Scene: “On your marks!”Sophie’s hands clenched into fists. If she was going to beat Fitz, she was going to have to give it everything she had–and then some.Adrenaline surged through her veins. The murmur of the audience faded, and she became aware of another buzzing in the back of her mind, like a back-up pool of energy she’d never noticed before. It felt stronger than the other energy. Could she draw from there instead?“Get set…Splotch!”Sophie threw her hands out, pushing toward the splotcher with her mind. Her brain seemed to stretch, like someone snapping a rubber band, and her ears rang, but she didn’t break her concentration.She felt her force meet Fitz’s and rebound. The next thing she knew, she was flying backward across the room. She caught the surprised look in Fitz’s eyes as the same phenomenon happened to him.For a long second she was weightless, then her back collided with the wall and the wind was knocked out of her. An almost simultaneous crash told her Fitz had met the same fate.Pain shot through her whole body and she collapsed. The last thing she saw was Fitz crumpled on the floor. Then everything went black.FTC Advisory: Aladdin/Simon & Schuster Children’s Publishing provided me with a copy of Keeper of the Lost Cities. No goody bags, sponsorships, “material connections,” or bribes were exchanged for my review.

This book didn't blow my mind but tickled it & kept me interested enough to keep on reading it. Sophie is a girl with unbelievable talents & hidden powers. I liked the friendship dynamic in the story. It's an excellent middle grade book with the right amount of emotions, angst etc sprinkled throughout the book. The story was fabulous & the characters memorable. Somebody had mentioned that this was like Harry Potter in the beginning and I went in expecting a similar sort of British humor. I was disappointed by the lack of humor, but that's more due to my faulty expectations than because of any fault of the author.I am interested in continuing with the series though I must accept I am not obsessed with it as I hoped I would be. Typical middle grade fun read. Go for it if you want to get lost in the new fantasy world that will distract you from the incessant problems plaguing our world right now.#NetGalley #TheKeeperofLostCities #ShannonMessenger #MiddleGradeSeries #4StarReads #InvestGrade

For more reviews, gifs, Cover Snark and more, visit A Reader of Fictions.True friendship can sometimes be indistinguishable from rampant cruelty. Case in point: Gillian (Writer of Wrongs) encouraged me to read my ARC of Keeper of the Lost Cities, which has been sitting around since I got it at BEA 2012. Okay, fine. To be entirely fair to Gillian, she did say “don’t do it” more than she said “read the thing,” but still. I never would have made this poor life choice if Gillian’s reviews of the series weren’t so FUCKING. FUNNY. Keeper of the Lost Cities was even more ridiculous than I could possibly have imagined and reading it was fun but also dear Gansey what the fuck did I just put in my brain?That’s how my brain feels, Haldir.I’m honestly at a bit of a loss in what to say about Keeper of the Lost Cities. I’m just still unable to believe that this book exists and was written by an adult. Everything about Keeper seems like it was devised by the mind of a child, which I suppose could be seen as a bonus, depending on the audience. My jaw dropped over and over as new heights of ridiculousness were achieved. Seriously, this has to be some kind of record for silly. That did make Keeper a fun read in a way, especially with Gillian sitting by (because standing is exhausting) for me to chat with about every new development. Following are some ridiculous details from Keeper of the Lost Cities:-All elves have blue eyes, except for Sophie, who has brown eyes.-Sophie pulls out eyelashes whenever she’s tense.-All dinosaurs are vegetarians.-Gnomes basically work as house elves, but it’s okay because they too like it. Keep your SPEW, Hermione.-In elf school, kids lick their lockers to open them. They have a new Bertie Bott’s Every Flavor Beans flavor every day.-WHAP means “wash hands and present,” as everyone knows.-Purple vegetarian glop tastes like a cheeseburger.-Yeti pee cures burns.-“It wasn’t until her lungs burned that she realized she’d stopped breathing.”There are a lot of crucial failings in Keeper of the Lost Cities, but let’s start with the most obvious: this book hardly has a plot. The reader meets Sophieflake as she’s finishing up her senior year in high school. At age 12. She’s a genius with a photographic memory, which of course earns her the jealous hatred of her classmates. But then, lo, a hot boy appears to tell her that she’s an elf, not a human, and that he’s an elf too.Of fucking course, right?Sophie’s whisked off to the elf kingdom where it’s promptly discovered how special of a Sophieflake she truly is. Without any training, she’s the most skilled telepath that ever was. She attends (Mozilla) Foxfire (*cough Hogwarts cough*), the school for noble and gifted elves (judging people on their class: it’s not just for humans!). There she dominates about half the subjects and barely gets by in others, especially alchemy (Potions).As Sophie attends Foxfire, the reader gets to enjoy such highlights as: Splotch ball, Sophie putting the mean girl in her place, and mundane details on every teacher in the place. Prepare for a whole lot of characters, many of whom probably are not going to matter in the slightest, at least in this book. Everyone who meets Sophie will either love or hate her; there is not other option with the Sophieflake. Prepare also for Sophie’s descriptions of everyone’s beauty and/or failings; girl is shallow.If Jensi’s friends were human, they wouldn’t been skinny, with acne and braces. Since they were elves, they were fairly good looking—or they could’ve been if they hadn’t slicked their hair into greasy ponytails. They stared at her like they’d never seen a girl up close before. One of them even drooled.These boys will continue to drool and be disgusting, even though all elves are hot. Such fun, right? So far, they exist solely for others to judge and ridicule them. How can we understand how special the main characters are if other people aren’t nasty?She was extremely petite, and her uniform looked like it spent the night balled up on the floor, but she still looked pretty. Maybe it was the way she’d twisted some of her hair into tiny braids, or her huge, ice blue eyes.Marella comes off much better through Sophie’s judgment filter, but it’s still so frustrating how she’s evaluating the attractiveness of everyone she meets, be they peer or teacher. Also, not exactly nice that she’s judging petiteness there. Or there’s this one, to describe her new guardian/father figure, which just creeps me out:Grady laughed beside her, and she whipped around to get a better glimpse of her new, dinosaur-riding guardian. With his chiseled features and feather-covered tunic, she couldn’t decide if he reminded her more of James Bond or Robin Hood—which felt wrong. He was so unlike her chubby, balding dad she wasn’t sure how to relate.What you cannot expect for most of this massive book is any sort of plot. Sophie will go to school and be the most special Sophieflake, constantly discovering new abilities and constantly bitching about how hard things are for her. She will remember that she misses her human family about once every hundred pages, which I find to be a truly realistic reaction of a middle grader to losing their family they supposedly loved. There’s also a lot of foreshadowing about what the eventual plot might entail, but mostly it’s just Sophie doing things and meeting people without any sort of plot arc whatsoever.You’ll go lots of places for no apparent reason. Haldir wouldn’t do that to us.The plot, such as it is, appears on page 395. THREE HUNDRED AND NINETY FIVE PAGES INTO THIS BEHEMOTH. That’s when Sophie finally get her mission and finds out that only she, Sophie the Bear, can prevent forest fires. Sure, it’s obvious that’s what her mission’s going to end up being, but there’s no pressure. The timing is relaxed, and Sophie doesn’t think of the fires raging in the human world until people remind her. That whole thing is set on the back burner, as it were. Mostly the plot’s an excuse for View Spoiler » Well, okay, to be fair, the plot also allows Sophieflake to level up to Sophiesnowfall; she’s not just one flake now!Sophie, special brown-eyed elf, attracts immediate male attention and female loathing. She’s warm for the form of Fitz, school golden boy with the teal eyes and boring personality. Rare are the times she encounters Fitz without literally falling on him or bumping bodily into him. Then she blushes. Every damn time. Even though she’s twelve and he’s fifteen, which is rather icky.Sophie’s got it bad, much like Haldir.Boyfriend possibility number two is Dex Dizznee (do not get me started on these names, because they’re a fucking essay in and of themselves). Dex is an awesome Weasley twin sort of kid, pulling pranks. For approximately two chapters. Then he morphs into JealousMan. He wants Sophieflake with all the wanting a twelve year old can muster, and he gets pissed every single time she talks to Fitz or anyone in his family. That doesn’t get old at all. Darling Dex hasn’t figured out that jealousy is totally not going to win him fair lady, but he’s never going to stop trying.Finally, there’s Gillian’s favorite, who isn’t really a love interest yet, but is definitely the best potential elf boyfriend: Keefe. Frankly, I feel like Keefe’s too awesome for this whole book. He’s this snarky, witty, rebellious elf boy, who makes fun of all the others. He’s desperately needed because everyone else takes life so fucking seriously. Thankfully, he’s not pining for Sophie’s love at this point either. Bless Keefe for existing and mocking everyone. If only he could get some better friends. And a better book.Curse this book and series. Keeper of the Lost Cities isn’t good by any means, but I’m totally reading the rest of them, joining Gillian in the madness. Even worse, I’m now curious about Messenger’s YA series, because I’m so curious if it’s like THIS. I’m going to try to resist, but I don’t know if I can.

This book is so GOOD!!! Go Fizphie! Can't wait for the next book!???

Awesome book, I recommend it. I kind of thought it was going to be a copy of Harry Potter (in a way) but it surprised me. Also just gonna brag Shannon Messenger.