Bullet Catcher
Joaquin Lowe
Against a desert backdrop, Imma longs to be a Bullet Catcher – a seemingly mythological person who can bend bullets back away from themselves. Bullet Catchers are always the good guys, while Gunslingers are the bad guys. Once Imma has a chance at glory, she will need to make a decision about where her alliances lie.
Where can I start talking about this novel? It arrived, I spotted it, and next thing it was 2 hours later and I still couldn’t put it down. …yes I have problems with being attracted to new books. The pages grabbed me right from the beginning, pulled me in, and kept me reading because things could change at any moment. And of course, I love reading about the training of new and innovative skills.
What I’m commonly seeing in fiction at the moment is a turn towards plot twists. Some are really obvious, while others are really sneaky. This one is not particularly sneaky, but it is heartfelt. Not to mention it keeps changing even as you are yelling at Imma inside your head not to be such an idiot!
Not even a sniff of romance. Apart from family ties, and master-apprentice matches, not a bit of teenage love. And honestly, Imma has enough to worry about without that. There’s plenty of character development for her, and a persuasive plot to not need it. In that way, it sort of reminds me of The Way We Roll, in which exploring different kinds of friendship and ties is the main agenda.
I couldn’t put this down. Maybe I’m getting soft in my old age (*cough* mid-20s *cough*), but I really think I could read it again. I connected with the main character really well, and I could feel all of the emotions. Not to mention the attainable ‘magic’ skills.
As always, it can be dangerous reading a sequel of 
The blurb of the book suggests that “a letter. In Jenna’s handwriting. Along with a key.” is the most important driving force behind the novel. In fact though there is so much more to the story. The interactions of the characters and the flipping time periods do a much better job of exploring the story.
There are some interesting things going on in this novel. If you wait too long after reading something, you lose those things. It’s not that I’ve waited too long, its that I’ve read about 5 books in the mean time. Oops?
The twist in this novel is that you don’t know there is a twist. I’m really not sure how long Will’s situation has been the way it is, but you get the snap-shot of when things are really changing. Will is very skittish, but cute all the same. Julian is not cute. He’s just annoying and pushy and a great friend.
Most of us want to hope that we won’t fall for a Con. Who would get into a pyramid scheme? Hell, I was almost pulled into one as a kid, but it didn’t work in Australia because we don’t have $1 notes to post. The deal was that you post $1 to each person on the list, then you add your name to the bottom of the list. Then the more people you send it to, the more you make back. Now it costs a $1 to send the damn letter, so you wouldn’t even break even!
I’m not certain what kind of audience this book is aimed for. Maybe for a tween girl? Someone who just wants to dip into a book, be inspired, then come back out. It took me maybe 5 minutes to read it, and I wouldn’t see myself buying the book myself.
I feel like it is possible that this novel had too many themes crammed into it, but instead I felt like they all balanced themselves out. It read exactly like the protagonist was thinking and feeling. Ash struck me as so confused, and yet so cute. And don’t be put off by the ‘teacher crush’ thing. It’s not a big deal, its just used as a prop for forwarding Ash’s character development.
Ah, the ending. It tidied things up nicely. Perhaps too nicely. Worlds never end like that. So it could be unexpected, except the minute a couple of people do their ‘expose’ thing, then it becomes obvious what is happening around that, and it proves to be inevitable. It was already so unpredictable, in its own way it was predictable.
All the characters feel one-dimensional, which is ironic, given that pretty much only 2D things can slip through the current crack used by Elliot and Madeline. I’m sure they could all pass through too!