by Lindsay 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.
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:
Website:
http://lindsaysmith.net/books/
Twitter:
https://twitter.com/LindsaySmithDC
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