posted on 16 Dec 2024

The Foundation (will always welcome you) by Melinda Salisbury

This is the third of what is scheduled to be a set of four stand-alone novels for readers aged 11+ that focus on issues around technology and its impact on our lives. And, I have to say right from the outset, it’s an absolute thriller and a guaranteed page-turner – once I started it, I just had to finish as quickly as I could.

Everyone except keen gamer Ivy Finch, thinks she’s got a problem with her obsession with the on-line world. In fact, things are so bad that her parents have signed her up for a technology detox programme run by the Ash Tree Foundation.

Reluctant though she is, when she arrives, Ivy finds herself bonding with two other girls who seem to share her sceptical world-view – especially when it comes to the charismatic Conrad O’Connell who is also at the event and is something of an internet/influencer heart-throb. Ivy and her new friends, Ruby and Freya, think O’Connell is something of a hypocrite - attending a technology detox course when he’s making all of his money from being an online influencer.

But, it seems, both Conrad and his aunt, Dagmar Nilsson who is the owner of the Ash Tree Foundation, have taken a special interest in Ivy and she finds herself slowly being seduced away from her friends and into the secret circle of Dagmar’s real project to create an AI system that is beyond the capability of anything that’s been seen before.

I’m treading carefully here in efforts not to reveal too much about the plot because I’m at risk of revealing spoilers that will damage your reading fun. Suffice it to say that as Ivy goes down the rabbit hole in the secret world of the Foundation, she finds herself a million miles away from a technology detox!

Melinda Salisbury is a four-time Carnegie medal nominated author who knows how to crank-up the tension and the jeopardy and she doesn’t take her foot off the accelerator as the story positively rattles along

As with all the books Barrington Stoke publish, they are written and presented in ways to entice even the most reluctant readers and this one has the added bonus of subject matter that will appeal to both boys and girls.

Published in January 2025, you will be able to get a copy from your local independent bookshop – who will, of course, be happy to order you a copy if they don’t have it on their shelves.

 

Terry Potter

December 2024