Powerless by Vicky Ball
Unexpected, Authentic, Dark
Genre: Teen & YA/Thriller/Family Drama
How would you feel if you had had to share the limelight with another for the first eight years, and then one day they just leave, and suddenly you have that spotlight to yourself. All the attention is on you….well eventually anyway. Then out of nowhere this person returns, and you not only feel like you might have to share that spotlight again, but find that you aren’t really in it at all. Your spot has been taken away again. You’re confined to the back of the stage, whilst the crowd can’t get enough of the main act, and you don’t even know the reason for that sudden change all those years ago, left as some sort of understudy for a play that you hadn’t rehearsed for (not that you knew that at the time), thrown on to the stage and expected to perform in their part when you weren’t ready. Keeping the performance going whilst all the others are seemingly forgetting theirs. They daren’t question the star of the show, for fear of her leaving again.
Having seen an item about Author Vicky Ball on my local news only last week, as I champion independent authors online, I was keen to find her profile and see what she had written. I don’t as a rule read the synopsis on a book I am planning to read so that it doesn’t interfere with how I write mine, but I did have a read of maybe the first few lines, or at least enough to draw the conclusion that it would be a book I might enjoy. I loved the cover, it does make you wonder who she is and why exactly the book is titled as it is. The book is split into three parts with subheadings. Those subheadings relate to one of the two main characters and whose perspective that section of the book is presented from. It isn’t a format that I always get on with, as it can make the book feel very long and drawn out, depending on the genre. In the case of ‘Powerless’ it is not a narrative that is spirit lifting or one I found all that comfortable to read for a large part, and so, at times, it felt quite arduous. The subject matter is dark, not the type of book that I would normally choose, if the synopsis provided any prior indication, or there was a trigger warning perhaps. I don’t think that trigger warnings are perhaps appropriate for this novel as, mercifully the unsavoury detail that could have been included, was only alluded to. Something I was grateful for, as I never like to leave a book unfinished. When I realised where the story was going, I did read the whole synopsis to ascertain if I could have got any clue to the actual nature of the storyline, and there is a subtle hint if you choose to see it. Now for the slight critiques. I did find that in some passages of dialogue, it was hard to distinguish who was talking. Although I do wonder if this was partly down to the formatting as I read it on my laptop. By my reckoning, when Beth returned, she would have been 22, yet when she goes for a walk with her mother and Abbey early on, she states that she is 20. However, this is corrected later on in the book. The only other thing that threw me was Lily and Beth obtaining jobs as tour guides on page 44 under the date of 2010, yet Beth states that it is ‘their first day’, on that particular job on page 48 under the date of 2017. I also wondered how it came to be that Lily’s parents knew where their daughter was. 
From the outset, it is intriguing as you wonder what Beth’s back story is from the last seven years, and how her returning will affect her family dynamic. When she is reluctant to tell her parents and her younger sister where she has been during that time, you really feel Abbey’s frustration, as she wants an explanation and Jack and Emily aren’t pushing their eldest daughter to provide one. I was sad for Abbey when Beth and Emily admonish her for posting on Facebook as, that is what teenagers do, plus I felt that it was an attention seeking tactic. If it was the latter, it most definitely worked. Around that time, Emily tells Beth that ‘everything is all her fault’ and yet she won’t expand on her accusatory statement. At that point I suspected Emily of knowing more than she was letting on, but it seems that she didn’t later on in the book, I guess it was just heat of the moment anger at Beth running away. Everything is seemingly quite normal, until Abbey has a sighting of someone significant to her sister on a couple of occasions. I got an early inkling as to what might be happening when Emily, the girl’s mother, seems keen to impress on her husband, the urgency of contacting the police, but Jack is less convinced. This got me wondering why that would be the case. His involvement, I have to say, and probably largely because this is the kind of novel I would normally not be that interested to read, I wouldn’t have guessed in a million years. Beth’s naivety during the part of the book that reveals how her life played out whilst she was away, is quite agonising, or at least it was for me. I really couldn’t believe that she didn’t see anything wrong in what was taking place. I thought her character was written well though and I liked the dynamic between her and her younger sister once they’d got to know each other again. 
Michael could have been a nice guy I think, if he hadn’t cared about covering his own back more than Beth’s. In different circumstances at a later part in Beth’s life maybe. I think the impact of the situation wasn’t maybe as powerful as it could have been for me because I felt I had to be mindful of narration and dates, and ensuring that I had the information noted that I needed to be able to do a detailed review and I would perhaps like to read it again some time. That said though, the events taking place did make me feel very awkward, particularly with the introduction of Stuart and his associates. The conclusions to Lily and Isabella’s stories were very different and it was nice that Beth had the chance to meet one of her friends again. It is quite frustrating when Beth doesn’t realise when she is blatantly lied to about Isabella’s whereabouts.
When Harry makes the acquaintance of Abbey via text, it did strike me as strange that he was able to get her number, although some people do include them as part of their information on their socials. Alarm bells started to ring for me at this point, but I changed my mind at many stages. It really wasn’t until Beth realised what had been going on that I realised myself, and it was fabulous to discover such a tense, and gripping tail end to an otherwise disturbing but not exactly compelling storyline for me, largely due to the fact that I didn’t pick up on early cues. It is a clever tactic to write a novel about something that is so suppressed in society that the reader doesn’t even think that that would be a subject that someone would write about. When the reasons for Jack’s business trips and his taking control of having to get away became apparent, I was genuinely shocked. I can definitely see why ‘Powerless’ is a best seller and will be interested in whatever Vicky writes from here.
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