Pun Salad

[This "review" also published at Amazon at the author's request.]

I know the person behind the "M. Bleekis" pseudonym, and I confess I was expecting a globetrotting thriller involving nuclear proliferation with a two-fisted but brainy hero, something in the style of Lee Child or Tom Clancy.

As it turns out, I got some of that, but... things start out different. The protagonist, Ariel, is a troubled young lady. Her once-promising academic performance has inexplicably gone into the toilet. She once showed phenomenal athletic talent in diving, but suddenly gave it up. She cries a lot. At the urging of a friendly therapist, she enrolls at "Lily Academy", an all-girl boarding school up in the Great North Woods near Jackson, NH.

Just when you think: "this is like an all-girl version of Harry Potter, except no magic, and more Latin verb conjugation" it turns out that one of Ariel's classmates is a member of a family under Witness Protection. And there are bad guys who desperately want to use her as leverage. So, over and above Ariel's problems, there's a lot of nasty skulduggery and (eventually) violence.

And a hungry, irritable, bear. And a secret society of women (you'll note that this book is "Secret Sisters Volume 1"). A sly reference to the 60's British singing duo Chad and Jeremy. And more.

The book is self-published and there are some noticeable typos: e.g., one character's name is sometimes "Kincaid", other times "Kinkaid". And there's some confusion between "discreet" and "discrete". This didn't stop the pages from turning.