Kevin Garone (2025)

(Not a review, just some notes to help me remember the things I've read. But written this way because it's the Internet, and some people will stumble across this page.)
I received an Advanced Reader Copy of this book (ebook). The following is what I plan to post on Library Thing:
I really liked this book. Twelve-year-old me would've loved this book. However, I think even young me might've found Marv's single-mindedness in seeing aliens and alien conspiracies everywhere to be a little tedious. He doesn't even refocus when confronted with both actual alien creatures and a real conspiracy while out one night searching the night sky for a possible invasion.
Marv's best fried Jace, aka Baller One, loves basketball and spew stats and history from memory, but he's still grounded in reality. Rounding out the group is their new neighbor, Nora, whom Marv gives the codename "Space Cadet". Marv believes she's actually an alien like her father but she might not be aware that she is. He also believes Nora's father knows something about the alien and the ship that appears in the woods.
After a freak lightning strike send Marv and Jace into the middle of the conspiracy, it's up to those meddling kids (and one dad) to save the day.
Four stars.
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If I had to give a rating on a scale of 1 to 5, I'd give it 4 because it was well-written, but Marv did get on my nerves sometimes. The story hits the mark for its target demo, in my opinion.
One comparison I might make about Marv is to Fox Mulder on X-Files. He believes in UFOs, and has an "I Want to Believe" poster in his office. That said, he doesn't see aliens and conspiracies in every case he investigates. He's aware of the conspiracies and can be a bit skeptical about evidence of aliens, and when he's not, he still has Dana Scully there to check things out and, hopefully, back him up.
Marv believes his neighbors are likely aliens from the moment they move in. In fact, I thought at first that they actually were and that the book was going to be set in a world where aliens had already settled among us. That was just my misunderstanding and my misreading of Marv's attitude. I guess I read so much science fiction that I thought "Of course, they're aliens" and not "There are no aliens living among us, duh!"
The father and the first "spaceman" who appears are both refugees from a scientific lab. They stole a prototype of a teleportation device before it can be used to take over the world by assassinating world leaders. The device has a couple of problems. First, there's a time lapse where the capsule reappears hours or even days after it disappears. Second, when it reappears, it's covered with "sleeches", what Marv names the small creatures that look like a cross between slugs and leeches.
When the capsule is later struck by lightning with Marv and Jace inside, the disappear for over a week, reappearing back inside the very lab that the ship was stolen from, there's a giant Sleech onboard, like the mother alien in Aliens compared to the eggs. The thing wreaks havoc with the lab, killing most of the security.
And one point, I would've expected or at least hoped that one of the security guards was going to turn against the evil villain if for no reason then the man was being ordered to his death because he wasn't going to be able to kill the thing when no one else could.
There is a "smart" move later on. They need to send the capsule somewhere where it can never be recovered with all the alien creatures aboard it, along with any new passengers that leech on the next time it jumps. But they need to capsule to get home, until Nora reminds them, "We're in Iowa." In other words, they don't need to teleport to Delaware. And they will be free to leave since just about everyone else is dead.
This was listed as "Alien Survival Guide (1)", so I have to assume more books in this series will follow. If I hear about them, I might check out one more just to see what direction the series takes.
If you stumbled across my page via the Internet, please check out my short book series, Burke Lore Briefs.
