The Electric Girl – 3.5 Star Book Review

Welcome to one of the June 15th stops on the blog tour for The Electric Girl by Christine Hart, organized by Goddess Fish Promotions. Be sure to follow the rest of the tour for 6 more reviews (including one from my schedule date buddy, author S.R. Cronin) and a giveaway! More on that at the end of this post.

Please note that this post contains affiliate links, which means there is no additional cost to you if you shop using my links, but I will earn a small percentage in commission. A program-specific disclaimer is at the bottom of this post.

About the Book

The Electric Girl
by Christine Hart

Published 15 May 2021

Genre: YA Science Fantasy, Magical Realism
Page Count: 222
Add it to your Goodreads TBR!

Polly Michaels is trying to forget that her mom has cancer. She keeps busy at school and plods through a normal social life. Until a freak electrical storm and a unicorn appear in the orchard next to her house.

Sy’kai wakes on an orchard floor to the smell of rotting cherries and wet earth. She doesn’t know where she is—or what she is—but she knows something is hunting her.

Polly recruits her friends to find the mysterious creature she saw from her window while Sy’kai, a confused shape-shifting endling from another dimension tries to piece her mind back together. Once the human girls find Sy’kai (whom they nickname Psyche) the mystery unravels and the danger facing all of them comes into focus.

A gritty struggle ranges throughout the girls’ rural hometown and in the wild terrain around it. All while two questions hang over their heads. Can an alien deliver a miracle for a human mother? Can a group of teens defeat an interdimensional demon?

Currently on sale in Kindle eBook format for $0.99 USD!

Amazon US | Amazon CA | Amazon UK

Excerpt

Sparks cut the space in front of her, dancing in a lacy ice and sapphire ring. If I can close the portal with him inside, it won’t matter what we leave behind or where I land. Trapping Nur-gahl was nearly impossible because Sy’kai needed her wits about her to close a portal. If she closed it too quickly, Nur-gahl would be left behind, free to devour an entire world, unchallenged by beings not capable of understanding what he was let alone the depths of his hunger, his fury. With every new passage her brain grew increasingly muddled by the energy expenditure and the instant intake of information—the new world and all its life being taken in at once. Her only chance to weaken and then destroy Nur-gahl was to find a world at the moment of its death, with nothing left for him to mimic. Sy’kai focused every molecule of her consciousness on finding this elusive destination. Her electricity stretched into a clumsy oval as a window to the unknown tore open. Energy exploded outward. Fresh, sweet air rushed at her, filling her lungs with relief.

But this new world was far from barren.

“I smell a feast on the other side! Go ahead, jump in. I am right behind you, ssssister!”

Rage flared in Sy’kai’s core. She risked a glance back and saw the dark silhouette of a gargantuan, monstrous creature racing toward her. She faced the portal again and plunged through.

Heat and light devoured Sy’kai’s flesh as the fissure enveloped her. What will I be on the other side? Please, please, let this be the final shift, she thought as the vacuum of the portal crushed her entire being.

Nothingness.

And then she was spat out from the portal, into the dark of night. Atoms pulled other atoms into minute clusters as millions of electric implosions sucked matter off the ground and out of the surrounding terrain. Pure instinct flowing from a primal mind scanned the landscape for a blueprint of sentient life. A mental tentacle scraped and slurped, hungry for material until it finally latched onto something in the distance and made its decision. Another explosion crackled behind her elemental brain, but the sound hardly registered in the morphling’s still-forming body.

Gray matter coalesced, bone materialized, and muscles knit themselves around the skeleton as it built itself from nothing. White light and raw energy found purchase through four glowing hooves. Delicious soft gas kissed her forehead, a body part that felt somehow heavy. Light hovered overhead, illuminating the way forward through dark leaves and moist dirt.

Brightness flooded the field ahead of her. Moments later, as her eyes adjusted, she sensed another life form somewhere inside the light. Instinctively, she walked toward a face she couldn’t see. A slight figure, a willowy bipedal creature with orange-red hair slowly came into focus. And the morphling brain, still crude with instinct and ability, reached out telepathically to evaluate this opposing alien heartbeat.

She turned back to the trees then as she felt the heat of another uncontrollable transformation taking hold.

My Review

My Rating: 3.5 Stars
Consider liking my review on Goodreads

I was granted complimentary access to The Electric Girl as part of my participation in a blog tour for this title with Goddess Fish Promotions. Thank you to all involved in affording me this opportunity! My thoughts are my own and my review is honest.

Polly’s mom is fighting cancer, and all Polly wants to do is live her teenage life, go to school, and pretend that nothing is wrong and she’s not in danger of losing the most important person in her life. When a literal unicorn shows up next to her house, all hopes of leading the simple, uneventful life she wishes she still had go right out the window. Can Polly and her friends find and help the unicorn? What does this have to do with aliens, and how can this result in a miracle cure for Polly’s mother?

This is an ambitious book with a great foundation, and I was very excited to get into it. I love the way relationships are presented in this book, and how they grow and change as the book goes on. At its core, this is a coming of age story for a teenage girl in a tragic situation.

But this is also a science fantasy that asks a whole lot of your ability to suspend your disbelief and enjoy the ride. I’m all in on unicorns and aliens, and the payoff at the end of this wild ride is definitely worth it, but it’s a rough ride. I can’t quite put my finger on why it feels rough, but my brain did not want to stay focused. Looking at the previous of those who were scheduled to review the book before me, I see I’m not the only one who felt that way.

I do recommend this book for advanced middle grade readers and up if you like a little strange in your urban fantasy, and I think this book would be best enjoyed as a family read or by an individual who plans to read it in short spurts, rather than attempting to read it in a day like I had to do to fit it into my schedule in time for the tour. Can it be read in a day? Yup, I did. Should it be read in a day? I really think this one needs you to take breaks and process.

About the Author

Christine Hart writes from her suburban home on BC’s beautiful West Coast. She specializes in speculative fiction for young readers. Her stories feature detailed real-world landscapes as a backdrop for the surreal and spectacular.

Christine’s backlist includes YA, NA, and MG titles, including the speculative trilogy The Variant Conspiracy. Her debut YA, Watching July, won a gold medal from the Moonbeam Children’s awards in the mature issues category and an honourable mention from the Sunburst Awards.

Christine holds a BA in English and Professional Writing, as well as current membership with the Federation of BC Writers and SF Canada.

She works as a content and communications specialist for a technology studio in Vancouver. And when not writing, she creates wearable art from recycled metals under the guise of her Etsy alter-ego Sleepless Storyteller.  She shares her eclectic lifestyle with her husband and two children.

Learn more about Christine and her books at www.christine-hart.ca.

Website | Facebook | Twitter | Instagram | Amazon | Goodreads

Giveaway Alert!

Christine Hart will be awarding a $25 Amazon or Barnes & Noble gift card, in addition to the prizes listed, the author will award a $50 gift certificate to the author’s Etsy shop Sleepless Storyteller (https://www.etsy.com/shop/sleeplessstoryteller) and a $100 gift certificate to the author’s  Etsy shop (International) to a randomly drawn winner via rafflecopter during the tour.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

June 1	Kit ‘N Kabookle	The Avid Reader
June 8	The Reading Addict
June 15	Westveil Publishing	Seven Troublesome Sisters
June 22	Michael Leon (Book Reviews)	Travel the Ages

---

Disclaimer: As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.