Book Review: MIND: The Beginning, by Jenn Nixon

Book Review: MIND: The Beginning, by Jenn Nixon

Published September 2013 by Crescent Moon Press

About the book:

After Dina Ranger loses telepathic contact with her brother, she breaks into his apartment and stumbles onto a special government unit responsible for monitoring the psychic population. She's offered a job where she can use her psionic gifts to help people.

Stranded on earth over a hundred years ago, Liam of Shria is searching for a metal needed to repair his ship when he finds Dina, a telepathic investigator, and narrowly saves her from an exploding alien pod. Together, they uncover a plot to rebuild an ancient weapon and discover the truth behind Dina's abilities while unlocking dangerous secrets about the alien presence on earth.

Can they stop a powerful weapon meant to enslave the human race? Can their relationship survive the secrets of the past or will it tear them apart?

My Take:

Okay, so sci fi isn’t my usual genre or thing. I mean, I’ve read and enjoyed sci fi in the past, but most of that was YA. This isn’t. But this was pretty cool. And hot. And… well, read on.

The story’s main character, Dina Ranger, has psychic/psionic powers that seem to be off the charts, so she likes to keep below the radar. But when she loses contact with her twin brother, Duncan, she decides she needs to check up on him. And discovers that he’s the head of some new government agency that keeps an eye on people like Dina. Duncan offers her a job and she takes it, thinking maybe she can finally use her strange, supernatural powers for good.

When she first runs into Liam, she thinks he’s a bad guy. A hot baddie, but a bad guy nonetheless. After he saves her life the first time, they discover a mutual attraction, sparks fly, things between them heat up to scorching levels… and then he tells her secrets about her past that blow her mind. She wants to run away – a technique that’s always worked in the past – but she can’t. They need to work together – and with her brother and his fellow agents – in order to stop the real bad guys and save the planet.

At first some of the psi-babble put me off, but I got over it soon after Dina and Liam meet. The heat and tension between these two characters is enough to melt an alien spacecraft down into a puddle of molten metal. Hot with a capital H.

The story is told from several POVs: Dina, Duncan, Liam, and Duncan’s second in command, Bates. Having so many points of view made the juggling a little hard, but Ms. Nixon handled it all pretty deftly. She continued to ratchet up the tension throughout the story until the final showdown, and manages to leave plenty of doors (and windows) open for further stories with these characters.

I’d totally recommend this book to anyone looking for a hot sci fi romance. The science is hot, and the romance between Dina and Liam sizzles right off the page. I look forward to more stories from this author.

About the Author:

Jenn’s love of writing started the year she received her first diary and Nancy Drew novel. Throughout her teenage years, she kept a diary of her personal thoughts and feelings but graduated from Nancy Drew to other mystery suspense novels.

Jenn often adds a thriller and suspense element to anything she writes be it Romance, Science Fiction, or Fantasy. When not writing, she spends her time reading, observing pop culture, playing with her two dogs, and working on various charitable projects in her home state of New Jersey.