Bold, funny, and unexpectedly tender.
Alex Scott has dangerous enemies. She returns to work for her egomaniacal, tyrannical boss, JT Wilson, not long after he assaults her and leaves her nearly broken. Even more dangerous than JT, though, is the voice inside her own head: Spike, an inner critic determined to bring her down by calling her a loser, urging her to quit, and tempting her back toward old vices. All the while, Alex is part of a covert operation working to stop JT from seizing global control. Her allies race to destroy his Crystalizer, the machine JT uses to sever spirit guides from their humans and banish them to another dimension. Alex, meanwhile, is tasked with planning JT’s fiftieth birthday party, a job he’s turned into psychological warfare, bringing back ex-lovers to torment her and pressuring her to line up eligible women for his approval. She throws herself into a Carnevale-themed spectacle complete with acrobats and illusionists, all while plotting to use the chaos of the party to plant a virus in JT’s computer that could stop his bid to rule the world. Can Alex help save the day while fighting the inner voice that insists she can’t? Or will she find her own voice instead, rising above her past to build something better?
In the inimitable fourth volume of her Mind Monsters series, Diane Hatz builds a world audiences will fall into instantly. The idea of Alex’s emotions made visible on the outside of the body, hair that shifts color with every feeling, is both funny and uncomfortably honest, and it keeps the story humming from the first page. Underneath the earth-saving mission, which never lets up its pace, sits something flinty and familiar: a woman learning to overcome the voice in her own head, a battle most readers will recognize. Alex is a heroine worth rooting for, and the people around her hold their own too, from the steady, fatherly Hank, to feisty assistant Dawn, to an unlikely ally in a consciousness uploaded to cyberspace. As for JT, he’s a villain readers will love to hate. Here and there, the mystic mentors guiding the resistance state the book’s themes a touch more directly than they need to, though it barely slows a story this confident. Bold, funny, and unexpectedly tender, The Journey Home delivers a strong woman’s fight to rise above her own worst voice and save the world along the way.
