UNSHOWN

In Ford’s YA SF novel, a powerless teenage girl in a world of superpowered people witnesses a man’s violent death and starts an investigation.

Paley Curtis hasn’t yet figured out where her “talent” is. Talents are supernatural abilities that nearly everyone has; they include such things as bioluminescence, sharper senses, and many others. Even her younger brother, Zed, has figured out that he can heal others. Paley is starting to worry that she will never have a talent; her older sister, Mera, has started telling her that she’s “probably a nonny”—a derogatory term for someone with no talents at all. While leaving the library one day, Paley sees a man levitating off the ground, surrounded by police officers; he’s gunned down by the cops seconds later for no clear reason. Afterward, Paley can’t get the incident out of her head, and she decides to find out more about the dead man. First, she calls a police public-relations person for more information but without much success; then she visits City Hall and the victim’s apartment. She discovers that the man, Harris Waltz, had dealings with Dillon Cray Engineering, her father’s former employer—and that DCE seems to have been involved in some shady dealings. With the help of friends, the inquisitive, unpowered Paley keeps digging into the mystery of why Waltz was gunned down—but learning the truth could put her in grave danger. In this novel, Ford intriguingly lays out a world where superpowers are the norm, and a seemingly ordinary human seems to be the odd one out. Refreshingly for the genre, these powers are just an everyday part of people’s lives, casually woven into the story, and the relatable main character spends the book wistfully hoping for her own. The novel’s pacing is occasionally slowed by unnecessary detail and lengthy interactions between characters, including excessive information about sports or Paley’s friends’ family lives. Overall, though, the curious mystery and compelling worldbuilding is enough to make this a worthwhile read.

A solid, offbeat superhero tale in which a girl draws on her investigative talent.