Vendor
	Mohrbooks Literary Agency Sebastian Ritscher
Original language
English
Categories
Children’s, Teenage & Educational

I BECOME SHADOW

Joe Shine

This debut thriller combines a pulse-pounding thriller (like False Memory or Starters) with a young adult coming-of-age story set at Texas A&M University.

When Ren Sharpe was 14, she was kidnapped by a shadowy organization called FATE and trained to be a human weapon.

Now, four years later, she receives her assignment: protect Gareth Young at all costs. Currently a student at a Texas college, Gareth will someday change the world. FATE calls people like Gareth "FIPs" -- future important people -- and they're everywhere, each with a FATE-trained shadow.

But when disaster strikes, Ren will have to turn to her maker and together with Junie, a fellow abductee and the one person she trusts, Ren takes Gareth on the run. Because whatever else happens, failure is not an option.

Joe Shine grew up in Austin, Texas and is a graduate of Texas A&M University. He has a MFA from the Peter Stark Producing Program at the University of Southern California, and after brief stints in Los Angeles and Washington DC Joe returned home to Austin. Joe has a normal human job like most everyone else but hopes to become a full time writer one day. I Become Shadow, his debut novel.

Available products
Book Published 2014-06-10 by Soho Teen
Book Published 2014-06-10 by Soho Teen

Comments

A lightearted take on government conspiracies and highly trained secret assassins. Fourteen-year-old Rennes Sharpe has a lovely life in Amherst, Massachusetts, until she is pulled out of bed in the middle of the night and taken to a secret facility. She learns that high-ranking officials can now see the future via satellite images, and that young people who would have died otherwise (like herself) are instead plucked from their lives and trained as covert bodyguards for people who will eventually become important to humanity. Her death is faked so her parents stop looking for her; she's given daily injections of something called "fire" designed to destroy her pain receptors; and in four years, she's released as a protective killing machine. But after meeting her FIP (Future Important Person), she finds out that both of them are just pawns in a larger conspiracy. The novel is brimming with wisecracks and jokes, which turn an interesting concept into a very light read. There is plenty of excitement and humor to carry the story.

Not-so-popular 14-year-old Ren Sharpe is kidnapped one night and whisked away to the training facility for FATE (Future Affairs Training and Education), part of a secret world organization. For the next four years, she and hundreds of other international “recruits” undergo searing daily nerve-killing injections called “fire.” Their survival and protection training is painful, dangerous, and relentless, but the results are human weapons that feel no pain, have no fear, and harbor an unwavering duty to protect the future world leader to which each is assigned. Ren is linked with Gareth, a Texas A&M freshman who will eventually be a world game changer. Never comfortable with the program that created her, Ren steps out of line when Gareth is attacked in a way that makes her think her organization has ultraclandestine plans they’re not sharing. With a love triangle, vivid training sessions, and ample action, Shine’s debut introduces a new kick-butt, funny heroine who could hold her own in a ring full of tough, independent girls like Katniss Everdeen, Tris Prior, and Lela Santos.