Teagan Frost is having a hard time keeping it together. Sure, she’s got telekinetic powers—a skill that the government is all too happy to make use of, sending her on secret break-in missions that no ordinary human could carry out. But all she really wants to do is kick back, have a beer, and pretend she’s normal for once.

But then a body turns up at the site of her last job—murdered in a way that only someone like Teagan could have pulled off. She’s got 24 hours to clear her name—and it’s not just her life at stake. If she can’t unravel the conspiracy in time, her hometown of Los Angeles will be in the crosshairs of an underground battle that’s on the brink of exploding…

I mean, it all starts with that title, no? What I love the most about this title is that it begins like approximately 43,567,809 other books on the shelves: “The Girl…” And then it just goes straight off the fucking rails & announces itself as something quite different & possibly bonkers.

The Girl Who Could Move Sh*t With Her Mind is the story of Teagan Frost, a psychokinetic living in Los Angeles. She works for a shadowy part of the government along with a small team. And they are like, wayyyy deep undercover. They call themselves China Shop, and actually operate part-time as a moving company in order to maintain the front.

The book opens with them on a mission that’s about to go all kinds of wrong. Although Teagan & her team believe her to be the only person with the power to move shit with their mind, a grisly murder that could only have been perpetrated by a psychokinetic changes everything. Teagan’s innocence is called into question, and she’s given a day (basically) to either prove she didn’t do it, or else answer for her crime.

The pacing of this book is brisk, to say the least. It’s a good sized novel (around 450 pages) , but I got through it in just a few days & dug the hell out of it! It had an incredibly cinematic feel to it, and based on my one visit to Los Angeles, a pretty accurate portrayal of the grimier side of that city. Now that being said…Jackson Ford is a pseudonym, and I don’t know for who. I had a working theory who it was, based on a hunch & a small amount of sleuthing (read: 3 minutes of Googling), but it doesn’t seem to pan out. One thing that becomes clear VERY early on in this book is that Jackson Ford is not an American author. I started keeping a list of the words that are spelled with more of a British spelling (kerb, tyre, itemised), but then just gave up. I did find it somewhat of a minor distraction, being that the story is set in Los Angeles, but eh, no big deal.

The relationship between Annie & Teagan was the highlight for me. Annie is sort of the muscle for the team, and her & Teagan have this rather combative sibling-like relationship. Like, there are times when they just don’t like one another, at all. But buried beneath the verbal jabs & silent treatments, there’s something that really connects these two characters. I loved watching them drop their respective guard just often enough to learn a bit more about the other.

There are some genuinely funny moments throughout The Girl Who Could Move Sh*t With Her Mind, but the humor leans heavily into caustic sarcasm, and I think that could’ve been used a bit more sparingly. I mean, these folks are caught in an incredibly dangerous & high pressure situation, so yeah, tempers boil over…but damn, y’all, ease up once in a while!!

I really liked this! For some reason I went into this thinking “standalone”, but I was happy to see there will be more in the series. The Girl Who Could Move Sh*t With Her Mind features a really cool & diverse cast of characters, it’s set at a breakneck pace, and was a lot of fun overall!

Big thanks to Orbit Books for sending me a copy!! The Girl Who Could Move Sh*t With Her Mind releases today, 6.18.19!