Borrowing Abby Grace: The Shadow (Episode 1)

Kelly Green

Publisher: Backlit Fiction

Publish Date: 17 October 2011

Version: Kindle e-book

Series: Borrowing Abby Grace

Episode one is where you are first introduced to Abby Grace and where she learns that she is a Shadow.  This is where she “borrows” people’s bodies in order to help them solve their problems.  The story begins with Abby waking up in the back of a van.  She is confused as to where she is and who she is.  She doesn’t even remember her own name.  She is living the life of Brooke, the girl whose body she has taken over, but when she looks into the mirror, she sees Abby.   After surviving the daring escape, she learns from Wilhelm aka Will, who is her Guardian, about Shadows and that she is supposed to solve a problem.  He doesn’t know much about what her current mission is, but is there to guide her along the way.

Brooke has a brother Paul, who is also missing.  She learns about this when she is brought home by the police.  To Abby, her mission is clear – to find Paul and reunite him with the family.  Since Abby is new at being a Shadow, she doesn’t always know what she is supposed to do and soon learns that there is a time limit to her missions.  If she doesn’t complete them, she will be trapped in Brooke’s life forever.

I really liked this story.  It was a short one and I read it very quickly.  I found myself being mesmerized by this book.  I couldn’t put it down until I was finished with it.  When it was done, I quickly downloaded Episode 2 because I just had to find out what would happen with Abby next.

Smart and sassy Abby Grace is a seventeen-year-old with a talent for getting out of trouble. Sent to repair the lives and loves of teenagers on the edge of disaster, Abby is the perfect girl for the job. She has everything going for her… except one thing: a body.

This fast-paced and exciting episode is the first installment in an ongoing mystery series with a supernatural twist.


Episode 1: The Shadow

When Abby Grace wakes up in the back of a van, she has no idea who she is, how she got there, or why anyone would want to kidnap her. After escaping her masked captors, she hurries home, only to discover that she unknowingly left her younger brother behind in the van. Unable to answer the police’s questions with her memories gone, she retreats to the safety of her bedroom where she tries to reconstruct her life. Just as she is settling into the belief that things will one day return to normal, she looks in the mirror—and sees a stranger’s face.

As Abby learns next, she has become a Shadow, sent to inhabit the lives of strangers in trouble. With nothing to go on except the vague hints of her cute but maddening Guardian, a 19th century ghostly teenager named Will, Abby sets out to rescue the missing brother. But she will need all of her intelligence, fearlessness, and wit, because if she fails to find him in time, she will remain trapped in this unfamiliar body forever.

▪ How this story is different than books I normally read.  Don’t get me wrong, I like books about paranormal beings as much as the next person, but I love it when a books challenges my imagination further than what the mainstream ideas do.

▪ The aspect of figuring out what the real problems are and how Abby is going to fix them in the allotted time.  I’ve always liked crime shows like Law and Order, CSI and NCIS.  This series brings out the investigator in me.

▪ Will.  Even though in the first Episode, Abby seems to be annoyed by him, he still seems like an asset to the books and her operation of being a Shadow.  I imagine we will see more of how he is helping Abby in future episodes of this series.

▪ The cover of the book.  I must credit Backlit Fiction when they came up with the cover.  I love how you see both Abby and Brooke in the cover and it reminds you that even though she inhabits Brooke’s body, she is still Abby.  She has all the traits that come with her.

▪ Abby is not always right.  This makes this more realistic.  (As realistic as being a Shadow can be.)  

▪ Waiting for more episodes of this series.  Other than that, I couldn’t find anything I didn’t like.  As rare as that is, it’s true.  There really isn’t a “bad guy” or love triangle in this book, so there isn’t many characters that you don’t like.