With great power comes horrific possibilities…

Former child prodigy, Rowyn Miller, needs to prove her incarcerated and spiralling dad isn’t a murderer. It should be a piece of pish—she is his ‘victim’, after all.

One not a soul has been able to see or hear her for 1,573 days.

Being a living ghost is hell. For starters, her available investigative methods leave Rowyn lagging miles behind the shadowy forces who set-up her dad. Plus, she’s desperate for a proper blether instead of the increasingly gloomy one-sided chats.

At least the creepy government scientists and unkillable terrorists can’t get their hands on her, though, and Rowyn will soon discover there are far worse ‘super’ powers she could have been lumbered with…

This book was provided for free by the Author and the publishers in exchange for an honest review. Many thanks to the publisher and the author for the opportunity to read this book!

Content Warnings:

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As the synopsis for Bona Fides explains, this is the story of the disappearance of a young woman. Rowyn Miller mysteriously disappeared one day, leaving no trace and leading authorities to place the blame on her father. Despite there being no body and very little evidence, he is convicted of her murder. There’s very little Rowyn can do about it; she’s been invisible for just over four years. Able to see and hear everything happening around her, and watch with anguish as her dad is convicted, but completely unable to do anything about it.

The idea of a young woman trapped on an alternate plane of existence, or perhaps she was a ghost, was enough to catch my interest in Bona Fides. However, I have to be honest; the synopsis does a great disservice to the book. While Rowyn and her situation play a prominent role in Bona Fides, she’s just one part of the overall story. This isn’t a story about Rowyn finding her way back to the world, which is misleading and also hides the hidden gems from this book. Namely, the other four main characters.

As the synopsis hints at, Rowyn soon discovers that there are worse superpowers out there, and one of them belongs to one of the other characters. Alexia, a trainee detective constable, has nuclear power in her hands and has gradually worked out over the years that she was literally toxic to those around her. Then there’s Hakim, a hacker whose brain is the equivalent of a supercomputer, making him a strategic genius. Guy is a powerful empath, and Leigh’s superpower, I found, to be very imaginative. She is a walking medical diagnostic tool and can solve any medical problem just by looking at someone. As for Rowyn herself, you’ve probably guessed her superpower: invisibility.

You can probably guess where this is going. A group of high-powered individuals mysteriously end up together, and the Government and terrorists are mentioned in the synopsis. Eagle-eyed readers may have also noticed that the name of the series is MI:X, which is the name of the secret Government team Rowyn, Alexia, Guy, Hakim and Leigh become under their handler Thornton. In some ways, Bona Fides follows the typical superpowered team playbook; there are the mysterious bad guys who naturally have their own superpowered team, there is treachery, the world needs saving, etc. But I would urge you not to judge Bona Fides as an X-Men rip-off or just another superhero story.

There is a lot more depth to this book, and British readers are going to feel it in particular. This is a post-Brexit book, written during the pandemic, and it takes on the topic of political upheaval in the UK in quite a genius way. When terrorists attack Parliament, it’s not to blow it up à la Guy Fawkes; they’ve got something much worse in mind: anarchy. It’s up to team MI: X, who are stuck in the building with a bunch of panicking politicians, to try and solve the mystery and stop the terrorists while dealing with personal drama and treachery.

There is a lot to enjoy in Bona Fides, especially for British readers. I think a lot of the language and banter will go over some international readers’ heads, though, especially as there is quite a bit of sarcasm and satire at points. Rowyn is Scottish, and the right amount of Scots is slipped into her vocabulary to show she is Scottish without it being difficult to read, becoming more prominent when she gets emotional. Although some words are probably unknown to anyone who has not lived in Scotland so a vocabulary list at the end of the book would probably go down a treat.

Most of the characters are well-developed with a thorough background that is developed further through flashbacks. Whitley has also written a novel set in London with characters from diverse backgrounds! Characters are from a variety of backgrounds, classes, races (African and Asian) and sexualities (lesbian). That being said, I felt that there were some gaps left in the character development of one character and the character creation of another. In terms of character development, Rowyn was a very difficult character to connect with. Her personality is all over the place. At the start of the novel, she acts like a strong, rebellious and brash character, mouthing off to people who can’t hear her. Once she has become visible again, her personality begins to jump between this persona and that of a young teenager, which would make sense if she weren’t supposed to be twenty.

Reading between the lines, there is the implication that Rowyn has spent the formative time of young adulthood on her own in complete isolation. The isolation alone will take a toll on anyone’s mental health, and that is vaguely referred to in reference to the way she talks to herself; however, rather than her being given actual help by anyone (including the Government handler), she’s just left alone. At times, I began to wonder if there was a mental health diagnosis coming, but nope, she just continued to jump around, and it was exhausting to read.

The other character that I felt could have been written better was Leigh Hong. As the other person of colour on the team, her background and the way she is described are distinctly lacking in comparison to Hakim’s. We find out that Hakim is African, and his family are from Lagos. We even get a titbit about how his granny makes (“pretty blah”) jollof rice at Christmas. In comparison, all we know about Leigh is her name, she has a Belfast accent with a “slight lilt of a non-native English speaker”, and later Alexia describes her as “a petite Asian doctor”. We aren’t even told what nationality Leigh is, what culture she is from. With the other characters, we get a flashback to their childhoods, which informs us more about their family and how they grew up. With Leigh, we don’t get this; we get one when she’s training to be a doctor. It’s a shame because Leigh was my favourite character, and I felt that she was very undeveloped in comparison to the other characters in Bona Fides.

It was hard for me to give Bona Fides a rating because, while I thoroughly enjoyed the book, I felt that the synopsis misrepresents the book quite heavily. If I had not been told that this was a superhero book beforehand, I would have expected a completely different book, and I feel I need to take that into note. As noted, there were the thoughts I noted about character creation and development of Rowyn and Leigh. I feel that a bit more work needs to be done to develop these two, and once that’s done, Book Two will be fantastic. These characters really grew on me, and I’m looking forward to continuing the story of MI: X.

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Thanks for reading my review for Bona Fides, the first book in the MI: :X Series by Ash B. Whitley. I hope you enjoyed the review!

What do you think of the superpowers in this book? Which one sounds the most interesting?
Let me know in the comments 🙂

Don’t forget to check out the rest of my reviews if you’re looking for some more book recommendations 🙂 You can also now sign up for my newsletter to get an email each month with a list of my new reviews!

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