Book one-hundred-and-six: Missing You

Missing You (2007)
Meg Cabot

Rating: 4.5/5
[Re-reading]

This is my favourite Meg Cabot series. I thought this was a perfect way of ending it – and of course, we finally get to discover what Rob was on parole for.

GOODBYE, LIGHTNING GIRL

All Jessica Mastriani—a problem teen, according to her high school guidance counselor—ever wanted was to be normal. But that changed during a walk home on a particularly stormy day. And suddenly, Jess realized she never knew how good she’d had it before.

Becoming known worldwide as Lighting Girl—a psychic who could find the location of anyone, dead or alive—Jess had no choice but finally to embrace her lack of normalcy, and eventually ended up lending her newfound talent to the US government (not to mention selling her life story to Lifetime to make into a television series that is currently funding her tuition at Julliard).

But her work for the government during the war takes a terrible toll, and Jess returns from overseas a shadow of her former self, her powers gone, Lightning Girl no more.

Starting over in New York City, intent on finding a new life at college, Jess is less than happy when Rob Wilkins, her ex, shows up unexpectedly at the door of apartment Jess is sharing with her best friend Ruth.

But how can Jess, her powers gone, find anyone—let alone the sister of a man she once loved (and believed—however erroneously—loved her back)—when she can’t even find herself?

I do wonder what the book she originally had planned was – I think it was originally supposed to follow directly on from the third. This series was cancelled a couple of years ago – before the Princess Diaries and the subsequent explosion of her popularity. Due to the subject matter – someone who could find missing people – the idea kind of changes when the world did. She couldn’t really keep saying “no, thank you” to working for the government when there was a war going on.

Although, it is an interesting decision by Cabot to not just pretend that this hadn’t happened. After all, if she followed the actual timeline of the book, she could have set it in 1999 or something.

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Finished: Tuesday 17/7