- Title: Have Power, Must Travel
- Author: Sabrina Graan
- Where to buy: Amazon (affiliate link)
- Genre: Fantasy, Young Adult
- Would I recommend: Yes! This is a delightful story about a reluctant hero trying to navigate life and master her superpowers.
Synopsis:
What happens when you mix one super-powered teenage girl, two special agents, a pissed-off ex-best friend, a pretty boy, and a DC menagerie? You get a cabal traveling headlong into a path of potential carnage. At least that’s how Iva Galen, the girl plagued with the superpower, felt about the sudden attention turned in her direction.
Iva had spent the past two years desperately trying not to die as her power dragged her from one end of the planet to another to serve as a whiplashed paladin. And all she had to show for it was the death of her friendships, two very stressed-out parents, and only a tiny pool of people slightly better off because of her power. There had been a bright spot, though, a gorgeous stranger who had shut her powers down for over three months. But now he was back in her life with the scarier parts of the government behind him, asking questions she didn’t want to answer. On top of that, her former best friend’s current snogging partner had seen something he should not have and was dogging her heels. Iva was sure she wouldn’t make it to graduation at this rate, especially since she was barely surviving Ms. Butler’s physics class.
Iva Galen is a reluctant superhero. For the past two years, she’s trying to protect her family and her best friend Kennedy from her unpredictable powers – the ones that have been flinging her thither and yon, teleporting her to wherever help is needed. Unfortunately, Iva can’t really control her powers, and she isn’t sure she’s really been much help to anyone.
When we meet her, after a three-month quiet spell, she’s just been yanked from soccer practice into the path of a monster tornado, presumably to keep it from wrecking a town. Her efforts to stop it with a wall of bubble gum end, shall we say, poorly. They also attract some unwelcome attention, and Iva soon finds herself the subject of relentless scrutiny from Luke, a classmate who happens to be Kennedy’s sort-of boyfriend, and Landry, the hunky stranger in whose lap the powers virtually dumped her several months earlier. But Landry is a government agent, and Iva isn’t sure she can trust him, or Luke, or anybody.
I absolutely loved this book! Iva tries so hard to fly below everyone’s radar. She is abrupt, sarcastic, and almost aggressively peculiar on the surface. She does her best not only to avoid attention, but to actively repel it. Yet people care about her, even when they’re not real happy with her, and she cares about them. She wants very much for her powers to make an actual difference to someone, and not just by stressing her parents out with worry and pushing her best friend away. I wanted to reach in the pages and hug her.
There didn’t feel like a slow moment in the story. I read it in about twenty-four hours because it was hard to tear myself away! Sabrina Graan gives us action, family, unresolved romantic tension, and characters you can absolutely cheer for and believe in, and it is marvelous. I’m sure my words aren’t doing justice to how delightful this book really was. Several of the main characters may be high school students, but don’t pass on Have Power, Must Travel if you’re not high school-aged yourself.
The story is bookended with observations by mysterious beings. We aren’t told who they are or for what purpose they’re peering into the goings-on of humans, but they don’t seem pleased with the ending. I’ll let you read and find out what exactly the ending is, but I will say this: It sounds like Ms. Graan has more to tell us about Iva and the situation in which she finds herself, and I am here for all of it!
This review originally appeared on Reedsy Discovery. I received a review copy of the book from Reedsy. I was not obligated to leave a review. All opinions here are mine, and I don’t say nice things about books I don’t actually like.
