Mind Writer by Steve Cole

9/10

I had read Steve Cole's Senseless and liked his writing style that much I searched for other titles by the same author, impressed he had written 3 new Young Bond novels among titles in his collection and came across this one. Cole's stories are fast-paced, interesting and have characters I can identify with.

In Mind Writer, Luke Mellows is a school kid with a difference, he can read minds but his power scares him. He can't understand why his mother loves that he gets good grades and impresses her all the time with his keen intellect. Luke thinks he is the only one with this gift, but that is until he meets Samira.

When he is in a class, Luke can listen for the answers to the questions his teacher will ask, though more recently Luke has all kinds of thoughts coming from the minds of his classmates flooding his head. All it takes is bully, Dan Stenton, to threaten him for Samira to help him out. Luke thinks at first she is doing him a favour. Her power is different however as she can rewrite a person's mind making them do exactly what she wants. Now that he knows Samira is a mind
writer, he feels even more uneasy as she wants him to fuse his power with hers.

I thought at first this would be a straightforward story of two people in conflict, one good the other bad. Samira won't leave him alone, transferring her thoughts and demands into other people to threaten him, even a teacher isn't safe against her mind control. Samira even threatens him using his mother, leaving him no choice but to obey her. What happens next is strange as Samira demands he come with her to a care home where an old man lies in a bed, only he isn't any old man. I won't give anything away as it is too good to spoil. I don't mind saying that I enjoyed the story as much as I did Senseless. Mind Writer starts fast, takes us into an adventure and ends in a quick conclusion that I hope would lead into a possible sequel.