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Monday, September 8, 2014

First Friday Debut Novel Day - Sekret

by Lindsay Smith


Sekret-723x1024Lindsay Smith



This past Friday, September 5, Marcy and I posted our answers to Linsday’s debut novel, Sekret. Today, you get to read Lindsay’s favorite's. 

Great picks, Lindsay! You’ve given us even more insight into the thoughts and motivations of your characters.
           

We hope our readers enjoy the story as much as we did.


1)    What is your favorite line or paragraph from the novel as it relates to the main character's development and/or growth?

Yulia spends the early part of Sekret fighting against her psychic ability and resisting the KGB officers who force her to use it against her will, but after some early missteps, she gets smarter about her dissent and learns to take ownership of her ability. So I love the line when she realizes this:

Someday, I promise myself, I will be strong enough that Rostov can’t pull my strings. I can no longer despise myself for this power. I must make it my own.


2) What is your favorite chapter ending or cliffhanger?

The KGB team of psychics are stalked throughout the book by a rival American psychic, who can alter and control their thoughts. Yulia thinks she’s figured out the trick to evading him, but then, as she finds herself drawn toward the ferris wheel in Gorky Park . . .

--and as I jolt out of my reverie, the scrubber climbs into the car with me, and the metal door slams shut.


3) Who is your favorite secondary character and why?

I love Larissa, another psychic on Yulia’s team who can see possible futures branching out. Her foresight has made her pretty zen about life, which can be frustrating for Yulia at times, but she usually means well by it.


4) What is your favorite line or paragraph of description?

I think this line early on in Sekret really sets the tone for daily life in 1960s Soviet Russia:

Khruschev understands the stale-cracker taste of envy in every worker’s mouth when a well-dressed, well-lived Communist Party official, more equal than all the rest, strolls to the front of the ration line.


5) What is your favorite line of dialogue?

When Yulia is first brought in by the KGB, she faces an officer who switches creepily between being matronly and threatening, which complements Yulia’s need to understand her own powers but also her desire to rebel. I think this dialogue encapsulates the KGB officer’s personality:

“You have a skill. Others, like me, have similar skills—but none quite like yours. So you will work for me, and I will help you refine it.” This time when she smiles, the patient motherly look is completely gone, and all that’s left are her cold, animal teeth bared at me in dominance. “Otherwise, as you know—we have ways of dealing with people who commit crimes against the State.”


Congratulations to Lindsay and her debut novel Sekret. Kudos to Lindsay for this book being selected as a Junior Library Guild selection, a Publisher’s Weekly starred review, an Indies Introduce New Voices pick, and an Indie Next List selection. We can’t wait for Sekret Book 2 to be released in April 2015. To read more about Lindsay Smith’s debut YA novel Sekret please go to:

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