A novel that feels like it was written like a comic book or a graphic novel, SCORCHED is a dark and gritty world of superheroes and villains. I expected to see "POW" and "Kabam!" written in the text, so realistically did Hayes' writing style portray the world of superheroes battling against evil. The fights and the danger felt like over-the-top comic book-style action, but the pace of those comic book exploits is unrelenting and the story gripping.

Verity Fortune is an Augmented superhero with telekinetic powers known as "The Seeker," a member of the ultrawealthy Fortune family who head the multinational company Fortune Corp. Her father and siblings are also Augmented, and they all disguise themselves in costume to defend Sapphire City from The Gallery, a group of supercriminals who want to control and run the city under a reign of brutal domination. The Gallery is led by Verity's archnemesis, Razorfire.

Verity has been locked up in an asylum by Razorfire and tortured. She finally manages to escape her captors, only to discover that instead of the three weeks she thought she was imprisoned, nine months have passed instead. And nothing in her life is as she remembers it, disorienting her severely. Her father is dead, killed when she was taken. Her sister is now advocating a nonviolent solution against The Gallery and is even running for mayor. Verity has a burning desire for revenge and leaves to seek her own vigilante justice. She hooks up with Glimmer, an Augmented do-gooder techie, who takes her to his underground lair, and together they decide to take down The Gallery. The more Verity tries to find out what happened to her and who is behind the murder of her father, however, the more questions she has.

After Verity's imprisonment, she struggles to remember the months before her capture. The disorientation that Verity feels is so well portrayed that I felt dizzy with turmoil myself. Throughout the novel we get flashbacks of Verity's past, as she begins to unravel the mysteries around her father's death and the destructive truth of who the real villains are. Heightening the bizarreness is the format of the flashbacks, which were written in present tense, while current events are written in past tense. But Verity has to unravel the truth behind her asylum imprisonment and the cover up surrounding those events before she is stopped for good.

The rollercoaster plot is cleverly twisted and devious, obscuring the truth so many times, which is great fun. The characters, especially Verity, are dark, gritty, and tortured. The novel felt very reminiscent to me of Christian Bale's Dark Knight version of Batman or CW's TV show The Arrow. There are hints of romance, but SCORCHED is more urban fantasy action.

Book Summary

In a world where everyone wears a mask, you can't trust anyone… not even yourself.

Verity Fortune was once Sapphire City’s top crime-fighter, wielding her powers of telekinesis to battle the city’s most despicable villains. Now, she’s consumed by a single burning desire -Revenge.

Against those who took away her mask, her memory, and nearly her life. Having escaped from the asylum they left her to rot in, Verity dons her mask once again and becomes the Seeker, a vigilante warrior for truth.But when she unwittingly uncovers an evil conspiracy deep within her own family, she’s suddenly on the run, alone and hunted by those she thought were on her side…